Everyone is saying this, but is there actually a measured increase in belief in conspiracy theories? I have only ever seen it stated as an assumption.

My father in law is a conspiracy theorist and it came a lot more from Fox News and talk radio than YouTube. They were pretty mainstream well before YouTube

The difference was that 1990s conspiracies were all about secret government agencies doing secret stuff in secret places. Modern conspiracies are out in public. Pizzagate, still belived by many, is different than area 51. This visibility means belief is constantly reenforced.

Most of the people I've talked to aren't crazy alien conspiracy theorists so I can't really comment on that brand of conspiracy theorist. Honestly my main experience is the standard 9/11, global warming, and Obama conspiracy theories (which were incredibly racist) from the early to mid 2000s and those were all pretty similar to modern theories and at least for my father in law and his friends were definitely from Fox News and talk radio.

Edit: a good example to me was the start of the birther movement, which is a quinessential modern conspiracy theory to me, and I remember that as talk radio and Fox News.

Global warming and birtherism were a turning point. It was then than condpiracy theories were directly applicable to politics. Managing them then became a practical political weapon.

The John Birch Society predates both, and was a similar movement by similar people towards similar ends.

The question is a bit philosophical at this point given the boundaries but is it truly their power?

The spread was by "Conspiracy Theorists" types look for self confirmation first to others of the type. It isn't like they could do anything to say get them to support say sensible infastructure upgrades because it wouldn't flatter their egos.

YouTube rewind got critically panned and any overt efforts for youtube tend to be poorly received.

The recommendation engine plays a very big role.

Fundamentally the ad companies (FGA) have a problem - their entire value proposition is that the little space at the side of the page and before the content is very valuable and has an influence on people's thoughts and decisions.

So if they then try to claim that the content itself, or the list of recommended "watch next" videos on Youtube, isn't influential, it fails the sniff test.

(Apple are mostly clear on this front. Netflix know the "watch next" is critical to their success, but they don't let people fill it with unvetted garbage.)

Pre 2009? Is this not true today?

Our society is so obsessed with the fear of censorship, or the "elite" hoarding all information, that we've now dived right into the opposite deep end. There's always too much of a good thing.

We created tech to usher in an era of new mediums. But we never stopped to ask ourselves what should we keep from the "old" systems. In any system that gets recreated/refactored, there is always a duplication of efforts. And that's what we're seeing right now. We're slowly realizing that editorialization is desperately needed.

In all these social graphs that's been created, we assume all "nodes" are rational actors, or are likely to be rational actors and that the information if just let free would steadily sort itself out. But that's not what we're seeing. Old diseases are new again and entire republics have fallen victim to misinformation.

It's well past time to address these issues. I thought 2008 was bad. I could have never imagine 2016. And now I'm severely worried about what non-sense we'll see in 2020.

Tech companies, and the employees in these companies, need to continually ask themselves what they're empowering.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMotykw0SIk&feature=youtu.be...