Apologies for an error

/ 24/01/2019

Earlier today we published a post in error. We have since found out that had we allowed that post to remain on the blog, we would have been in contempt of court, so we have removed it.

Unfortunately, this also removed a number of comments, and left some readers confused. We can only apologise for our ignorance of the reporting restriction; we hope our readers will understand.

Image: Butupa, Flickrhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/25792994@N04/5299579966

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22 thoughts on “Apologies for an error”

    • That conspiracy theory article was alarming in some ways, EC. I’d heard of some of them but I didn’t know their full implications. I’d heard of gamer-gate but had not realised its meaning. I always thought the flat earth notion was funny but conspiracy theories seem to have taken a turn from the whacky and not so wonderful into the downright nasty. (Maybe there were always some conspiracy theories which were unpleasant but before the internet I didn’t know about them).

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      • GamerGate is a little more complicated than it first appears but a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. And to prove a point that popular quote attributed to Churchill was never a Churchill quote!

        It was probably one of the first rabbit hole theories which, in a roundabout way, eventually led me here as I followed it avidly at the time. It was a mess.

        We are now well beyond the stage where trying to disentangle truth from fiction in GamerGate will ever be a worthwhile exercise, but on the plus side it has identified a lot of misogynistic trolls masquerading as “debunking” YouTubers I previously followed who probably wouldn’t have stuck their heads above the parapet if they hadn’t found like minded souls as a consequence.

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      • I’m halfway (maybe less?) through reading the article but I was struck by this quote:

        “By Pozner’s reckoning, one in five people around the world are suggestible to conspiracy theories, and their obsessions are amplified by the crude logic of digital algorithms. ‘There is just no more truth, there is just what’s trending on Twitter,’ he says. ‘Used to be, you had to burn books to keep people from finding out the truth, now you just have to push it to page 20 of a Google search.'”

        I’m also remembering as a child who grew up in the 70s that it was oft reiterated by my Da that personal political and religious views were private, to declare your beliefs openly would be tantamount to social suicide…I think he knew then that such declarations would prove to be unnecessarily divisive, that other things were far more important like finding common ground….why waste time finding cause to disagree…let’s be humans together and care…let’s get on with the business of living the best lives we can where reduction of harm is paramount.

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    • I was thinking of posting the link; but thought people would ignore it. Understand that an ‘error’ was made; it happens to the best of us! TC

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  3. That is a very interesting article from the Guardian. People seem to forget that online conspiracy theories can affect real-life people. These stories aren’t harmless fairy tales. I can’t imagine how frightening it must be to suddenly find yourself the target of hordes of online nutters through no fault of your own.

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    • So funny! In Ireland we have the same bollix going on as you know yourselves given APD’s support of Ben Gilroy, the self-declared leader of Ireland’s yellow vest movement and current martyr to the supposed Irish experience of the cause….the slagging he’s getting for being such a fool is hilariously funny.

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      • Gemma O’Doherty is another fruit loop@Siouxie. Did you see her Twitter post about Ellis Kisyombe being up for council elections in May? It certainly backfired on her lol! Now she is saying that her post was misunderstood & that the snowflakes are in meltdown. My favourite tweet is, “You popping on my timeline usually makes me gag but this is great news, thanks Gem!” I’ve had a great laugh at the responses. 😁

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  6. I really detest infowars (it doesn’t deserve a capital) and jones himself, he is maybe one of the worst when it comes to peddling garbage for $$$, but he certainly isn’t the only one, there are quite a few sites that actively encourage conspiracy ‘theorists’ (or nutters imho) who are just as active in promoting every hoax, and many are quite blatant in their moderation or lack thereof…
    ats (above top secret) and godlike productions are another couple of places that regularly have posters not only posting long discredited hoaxes, but often ban posters who ‘debunk’, plus allow some incredibly noxious posts to remain up

    One thing I would advise is staying well clear of these ‘forums’ unless you have an almost paranoid level of security on your computer (and I am not talking about just having an up to date antivirus!- I am talking sandboxed virtual machines with full on top notch security, some regular debunkers have a dedicated machine just for these types of sites and run through proxies and vpn’s to prevent their personal exposure as they are often doxxed) as they are (ironically) a major source of spyware, viruses and other malware- rather than the ‘evil gubermunt’ being the source of their regular computer crashes and infections, it’s their own forums doing it

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