I wouldn't say that Epstein is a vindication of conspiracy theories, at least not the "Bigfoot" type. Epstein was already in trouble with the law for trafficking over 20 years ago. The pedophilia in the Catholic church was known decades before that. It's shameful that these stories didn't get more attention sooner, but the general veracity of them wasn't in question.
The prototypical pedophilia conspiracy theory we didn't believe at all is the Comet Ping Pong one, which was appropriate.
> The pedophilia in the Catholic church was known decades before that.
Except the proportion of paedophile priests is about the same as the proportion of paedophiles in the general population. There are more paedophiles in schools and social services than in religious organisations - and there have even been more convictions of teachers and social workers, at least tin the UK. The reason you think of the Catholic Church this way is BECAUSE it got more media attention earlier than elsewhere. A surprising number of people the UK do not know about the biggest big paedophile scandal in the country, the Islington one, that was huge, and at least one politician who was responsible for the failure to investigate went on to have a successful career in politics (the only time it set back her career at all was when Blair wanted to make her minister for children there was a backlash)
> The reason you think of the Catholic Church this way is BECAUSE it got more media attention earlier than elsewhere.
I think what earned the Catholic Church their reputation was that the church was actively involved in protecting known pedophiles and repeatedly shuffling them around effectively giving them an endless supply of fresh victims while suppressing the voices of many of the children brave enough to come forward. The problem with the church isn't that pedos exist there, but that they've been very often supported and defended and their actions covered up in ways that don't (and often couldn't) happen in schools.
I believe you but is there a source that you can refer me to? I guess I just believed abuse was more common in the Catholic church but your post made me realize my impression had no facts behind it.
> Except the proportion of paedophile priests is about the same as the proportion of paedophiles in the general population.
I doubt you have any reliable statistics about this, given how many victims keep silent out of fear.
But in any case, the moral failure of the church was not the existence of individual abusers (which indeed can exist anywhere in society), but how on an institutional level known abusers were protected by the curch. Everyone who was part of the cover-up (which went all the way to the top) is complicit.
I think if 20 years ago you claimed that there was a global sex trafficking ring that procured young girls for elites, politicians, celebrities, and royalty, you'd be laughed off as a David Icke level conspiracist. These days it just seems obvious that that was going on.
Its not just a sex trafficking ring, its a corruption ring, and the corruption part of it is much bigger. It is what the arrests in the UK have been for. Given how senior some of the people in the UK are (Mandelson is a former cabinet minister, and a former European Commissioner, and was very influential even before he held those posts).
If they had not trafficked minors as well I wonder whether it would ever have been exposed. It makes me wonder what else is going on.
"Bigfoot" isn't inherently a conspiracy theory. If you say that bigfoot exists, you're wrong, but not necessarily a conspiracy theorist. To be a conspiracy theorist, you also have to posit a grand conspiracy to conceal the existence of bigfoot.
If you posit a conspiracy that only involves a few people who could plausibly coordinate to conceal the truth, that's also not a grand conspiracy, and we don't call people conspiracy theorist for believing in regular, everyday criminal conspiracies.
It wasn't meant to be philosophical, it was meant to be practical. As a practical matter, you're wrong if you say that Bigfoot exists, or that the sun won't rise tomorrow.
> If you posit a conspiracy that only involves a few people who could plausibly coordinate to conceal the truth, that's also not a grand conspiracy, and we don't call people conspiracy theorist for believing in regular, everyday criminal conspiracies.
No, but we did call people conspiracy theorists for believing the thing Snowden subsequently showed to be real.
Not me, I didn't. That conspiracy was certainly pretty big, but there was also a ton of smaller leaks as you'd expect on a real conspiracy of that size, so you certainly wouldn't be called nuts for assuming NSA were spying on a lot they weren't supposed to.
Security state loyalists were not nearly as influential in online discourse back then, as they are now. Probably astroturfing, AI and algorithmic amplification plays a part in that.
Well he and his people are far too stupid and incompetent to have come close to succeeding. While it's not great that there was no punishment, we should at least be thankful that they act on emotion and can only loosely follow playbooks for corruption from the past rather than write new ones for modern times.
It gets lost in the distracting partisan bickering over Musk/etc, but Twitter has gotten hostile and crappy in many ways like this that have nothing to do with politics. Imagine how much more hostile this action would have seemed in 2010. But now, people put up with it.
As a 50 year old, I can recall a lengthy stretch of time in the US when lamenting the lack of a "white homeland" would not be considered "partisan", but extremely fringe speech that the mainstream would mostly shun.
Twitter is certainly terrible for those reasons as well. Terrible people are excusing apolitical enshittification because they're thankful the Overton window has been pushed down to where they live in the bottom of the barrel. You just can't say the latter part too loudly here because there's sufficient sympathy and affinity for it.
> You just can't say the latter part too loudly here because there's sufficient sympathy and affinity for it.
I think you're right, and I find this revolting. Tech always had its weirdos, but mostly they were kind of idealistic, naive, or had some quirks or otherwise were maybe a bit unique, but they weren't into that kind of flat out evil ideology. Or at least not openly, because there was a sense of shame around that kind of ideology.
Not really sure how much people really even put up with it. I just went to Bluesky once I got an invite, and I've generally noticed my cohorts migrating there over time too. Sure, some content isn't there, but a smaller social media better than beating your head against the wall.
Your comment doesn't make sense because the fact that "dead internet" has been coined since then (along with the popularization of "slop" and "hallucination") means there is a line and we have crossed it. Denial doesn't stand up to any scrutiny.
It's too bad we weren't more skeptical about the ways emerging technologies would eventually be used against us. Some warned about it but many (including me) ignored them. Perhaps we could be forgiven for that naivete, but there's no excuse to be ignorant of what's going on now.
The utility of those larger sites is coming to an end, but most people aren't discerning or ambitious enough to leave and seek out the smaller places you mentioned. Places like this will remain but will join Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter as shadows of their prior useful selves. The smaller, better sites won't have to worry about attracting the masses and therefore worsening, because the masses have finally settled.
I don't know how he could ban it. AI can't be used to reliably detect AI for the same reasons it's unreliable at other tasks. He didn't really have a choice but to sell the same grift everyone else is selling. He's stuck in a prisoners' dilemma that everyone is losing except a few people at the top.
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