Conspiracy

Elon Musk has restored the X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones following a poll on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that came out in favor of the Infowars host who repeatedly called the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax.It poses new uncertainty for advertisers, who have fled X over concerns about hate speech appearing alongside their ads.Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteIIT DelhiIITD Certificate Programme in Data Science & Machine…

Social media platform X will reinstate the account of US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after a poll of the site's users backed his return, X owner Elon Musk said on Sunday."The people have spoken and so it shall be," Musk posted in reply to a poll on Saturday on whether to reinstate the Jones account. Close to 2 million votes were cast by the time the poll closed, with about 70% voting in favor of Jones' return.Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteIndian School of…

When notorious pedophile and wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein died in a jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking minors, he left conspiracy theorists with a tangled web of lurid mysteries that would keep them busy for years to come. Suspicions that Epstein hadn’t really hanged himself soon gave way to claims of a vast coverup — the man supposedly murdered to prevent him from revealing the worst secrets of the global elite. Now, four years later, far-right politicians and commentators…

Credit: Markus Winkler from Pexels New research from the University of Nottingham and Northumbria University has found that conspiracy theories about social groups can have significant negative effects on their members. In a series of empirical studies, Dr. Daniel Jolley, from the School of Psychology, along with Dr. Jenny Paterson…

Amazon is throwing its e-commerce bulk into the AI game like an enormous capybara stampeding into the outside lane of the ongoing AI rat race. The company finally shared details of its new AI chatbot assistant dubbed “Q” at its AWS re:Invent event on Tuesday. Just as can be expected from the starched suits at Amazon, Q is the kind of chatbot that only wants to talk about productivity, synergy, or whatever other business jargon.Like It or Not, Your Doctor Will Use AI | AI UnlockedQ is a tailored AI that’s meant to tap into…

A graph showing the Google Perspective API results. Author provided As the war between Israel and Hamas has intensified in Gaza, disinformation and conspiracy theories about the conflict have been increasingly circulating on social media. At least that's what I found in my analysis of some 12,000 comments posted on Telegram…

If endorsing antisemitic posts wasn’t enough, Elon Musk has now advanced several rungs in the batshit conspiracy ladder into engaging with a post pushing Pizzagate.  Last week, Musk wrote “You have said the actual truth” in response to a post from an X user claiming Jewish people were responsible for promoting “dialectical hatred against whites.” The X owner promoting the antisemitic conspiracy theory drew widespread backlash, including from the White House. The following morning, Media Matters, a nonprofit…

Sen. Mike Lee perpetuated an unfounded conspiracy theory that federal agents or informants were among the rioters on Jan. 6 and that one may have flashed a law enforcement badge during the attack (in reality, it was a vape). In two posts to X (formerly Twitter) over the weekend, the Republican indulged in a MAGA disinformation campaign. Lee quoted a post from former Jan. 6 committee member Liz Cheney that contained footage of the Capitol attack, writing, “Liz, we’ve seen footage like that a million times. You made…

Elon Musk has encouraged extremists and white supremacists throughout his yearlong tenure as the owner of X, formerly Twitter, but this week he still managed to push the limits of what behavior mainstream users — and advertisers — will tolerate. On Wednesday, Musk endorsed a post from an X user accusing Jewish communities of spreading “dialectical hatred against whites.” The statement was itself a reply to a different X post sharing a PSA video from the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism along with criticism of…

Elon Musk, who has steered X (formerly Twitter) into a tsunami of antisemitic discourse since taking over the site in 2022, has now endorsed a post attacking Jewish communities and accusing them of promoting “dialectical hatred against whites.” On Wednesday, X user @CWBOCA, whose bio states “Jewish Conservative from S. Florida,” shared a PSA from the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism that depicts a father confronting his son for posting the pro-Nazi refrain “Hitler was right” online. The post is captioned: “To the…