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for how could we ever really know whether the vaccine was the cause?

I did more research, and I learned that scientific organizations around the world — including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health — had proved the vaccine theory false. No one could say for sure what caused autism, but they certainly could say that it wasn’t a vaccine.

it’s easy to understand why some parents of children with autism want to see conspiracy and evil where none exists

Videos that could “misinform users in harmful ways,” such as ones that claim the Earth isn’t round or question the actors behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, will no longer be recommended with as much prominence, the Alphabet Inc. GOOGL 1.62% unit said in a blog post Friday.

Though the factors underpinning YouTube’s recommendation system are largely unknown, its influence is apparent in the numbers. YouTube has said its recommendations drive more than 70% of users’ viewing time, and that it recommends more than 200 million videos daily on its home page alone.

Byzantium – or more properly, the medieval Roman Empire – controlled much of the Mediterranean at the height of its territorial rule in the mid-sixth century.

His premise is that when Rome fell, the Byzantine Empire went on to preserve a white-European civilization. This isn’t true.

Mentions of Byzantium are scattered across message boards frequented by both white supremacists and QAnon enthusiasts – who spout conspiracy theories about a deep-state cabal of Satan-worshipping, blood-drinking pedophiles running the world.

Twitter says it has suspended more than 70,000 accounts associated with the far right QAnon conspiracy theory following last week’s U.S. Capitol riot.

“These accounts were engaged in sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale and were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service,”

The QAnon conspiracy theory is centered on the baseless belief that Trump is waging a secret campaign against “deep state” enemies and a child sex trafficking ring run by satanic pedophiles and cannibals.

Annie says it wasn't that long ago that she could talk politics with her mom without things getting heated. But when the pandemic started, she says their conversations were peppered with conspiracies.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: She's spending 16 to 18 hours a day consuming this. CORNISH: And the result of all this is a detachment from the facts.

Q's stories range from false notions about COVID to a cabal running the U.S. government to the claim there's a secret world of satanic pedophiles. But what's relevant here is that this culminates in a belief that President Trump is a kind of savior figure, which leads to the next phase for these families - a breakdown.

So the Mueller Report is finally out. President Trump has called it a “total exoneration,” but we don’t have to take his word for it. After special counsel Robert Mueller’s comprehensive, two-year investigation into serious allegations of Russian electoral interference, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice, we’re free to read what the special counsel’s findings actually are, if we so choose—albeit with a number of careful redactions from William Barr that along with his four-page summary, framed public conversations about the report in important ways.

It can persuade us one way or another by using certain rhetorical or linguistic means. What’s more, a particular framing doesn’t just arise spontaneously to the top of the public consciousness from its own legitimate merits, because it happens to be the neutral truth. We would be naive to think so, yet many people do. When it comes to the power of states, in sociologist Christopher A. Bail’s view, it has to be knowingly crafted, with two realities. One is a front stage presentation for public consumption and the other a secret collective coordination behind the scenes. Their reality becomes your reality, one way or another.

To Dwight Bolinger, “literal truth—the kind one swears to tell on the witness stand—permits any amount of evasion.” He explains: “The most insidious of all concepts of truth is that of literalness. The California prune-growers tell us that prunes, pound for pound, offer several times more vitamins and minerals than fresh fruit; literally true. The oil industry advertises that no heat costs less than oil heat, which has to be true because no heat costs nothing at all.” Those savvy enough to see through it will simply eat fewer prunes and heat their homes differently to those who fall for it. But declaring that you didn’t lie but told the literal truth in this way seems a kind of hollow ethic, a careful weaselling around the words that some lawyers seem particularly adept at.

Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter generate revenue by using detailed behavioral information to direct ads to individual users.

this bland description of their business model fails to convey even a hint of its profound threat to the nation’s political and social stability.

legislators in Congress to propose the breakup of some tech firms, along with other traditional antitrust measures. But the main hazard posed by these platforms is not aggressive pricing, abusive service or other ills often associated with monopoly.

This is an unfortunate and pernicious pattern. Musk often refers to himself as moderate or independent, but he routinely treats far-right fringe figures as people worth taking seriously—and, more troublingly, as reliable sources of information.

By doing so, he boosts their messages: A message retweeted by or receiving a reply from Musk will potentially be seen by millions of people.

Also, people who pay for Musk’s Twitter Blue badges get a lift in the algorithm when they tweet or reply; because of the way Twitter Blue became a culture war front, its subscribers tend to skew to the righ

Before rank-and-file conservatives ask, "What went wrong?", they should ask themselves a question every bit as important: "Why were we the last to realize that things were going wrong for us?"

It is easy to close oneself off inside a conservative echo chamber. And right-leaning outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh's show are far more intellectually closed than CNN or public radio.

Since the very beginning of the election cycle, conservative media has been failing you. With a few exceptions, they haven't tried to rigorously tell you the truth, or even to bring you intellectually honest opinion. What they've done instead helps to explain why the right failed to triumph in a very winnable election.

The theory that the moon landings were hoaxed by the US government to assert their victory in the space race over Russia, is something which has grown in popularity over time.

Mr. Romney “described conservatism as if it were a disease.” Indeed. Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, provided a list of words that most commonly follow the adverb “severely”; the top five, in frequency of use, are disabled, depressed, ill, limited and injured.

That’s clearly not what Mr. Romney meant to convey. Yet if you look at the race for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, you have to wonder whether it was a Freudian slip.

Rick Santorum, who, according to Public Policy Polling, is the clear current favorite among usual Republican primary voters, running 15 points ahead of Mr. Romney. Anyone with an Internet connection is aware that Mr. Santorum is best known for 2003 remarks about homosexuality, incest and bestiality. But his strangeness runs deeper than that.

When I came across the theory that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine could cause autism, it made a kind of Old World sense to me. From what I could gather, it sounded as though the vaccine might blow apart some young children’s immune systems, making them susceptible to all kinds of conditions. I was so worn down, so miserable in those days that I was desperate to believe there was a culprit, something or someone to blame. It was a relief to think that the problem wasn’t my DNA but an outside aggressor, a mistake caused by the medical establishment’s hubris.

But the more I thought it through, the less clarity I had.

Thomas Jefferson often argued that an educated public was crucial for the survival of self-government

We now live in an age in which that education takes place mostly through relatively new platforms. Social networks — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. — are the main mechanisms by which people receive and share facts, ideas and opinions. But what if they encourage misinformation, rumors and lies?

In a comprehensive new study of Facebook that analyzed posts made between 2010 and 2014, a group of scholars found that people mainly shared information that confirmed their prejudices, paying little attention to facts and veracity. (Hat tip to Cass Sunstein, the leading expert on this topic.) The result, the report says, is the “proliferation of biased narratives fomented by unsubstantiated rumors, mistrust and paranoia.

Washington has become a hall of mirrors, where it's impossible to distinguish between rumor and fact as conspiracy theories and partisan paroxysms rage -- all arising from an alleged Russian spy plot to sway last year's election that is now clouding the new administration.

Often, President Trump himself reignites the drama — apparently to his detriment — as with his sensational claim Saturday that his predecessor Barack Obama tapped his phones.

The White House spokesman Sean Spicer insists that there is "no there, there" in the Russia intrigue.But the conduct of the President himself often undercuts that message. Some observers have noted that while there may be nothing nefarious going on, the President often acts in a way that suggests there is.