It's actually the result of a natural civilization cycle where falling living standards and increased intra-elite competition and conflict erodes the public trust in its institutions and leads to political unrest. America is now in the thick of it (starting around 1970 and culminating in the last decade), and so trust will remain low and conspiracy theories high for years to come yet (not to mention the riots).

https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/7ahqn/

I think conspiracy theories fill the same void as religion does. It’s for people who want to believe in a higher truth, that someone more powerful is constantly pulling the proverbial strings and the universe isn’t just a chaotic series of random events. And I believe, like religion, that those who love conspiracy theories are less interested in researching those facts themselves because they’ve come to rely on their assumptions for comfort and their peers for unity.

In short, it’s less about the actual conspiracy and more about the individual needing something more in life.

Like flat earth and anti-vax? To me, it seems more obvious that that's the effect of attention and manipulation in media, both "classic" and social.

A suspicious attitude institutions has always existed: from the government down to the grocer, who pushes the scales down while weighing. The more the attention is drawn towards it, the greater the suspicion gets, and I feel that especially divisive attention feeds suspicion. When behavior of an institution, such as the Trump administration, is not beyond reproach, it feeds the attention cycle.

The Flat Earth thing makes no sense to me, but regarding Anti-Vax: again, not defending them, but it’s trivially easy to find examples of governments (worldwide) deceptively giving people medicine which had a negative effect on their health, whether as experimentation, sterilization, or otherwise. The fact that vaccines are scientifically known to be safe is just lost in the noise.

I attribute the rise of conspiracy theories to an overabundance of information; doing the research on each individual topic is just overwhelming to the average person and subsequently a simplistic conspiracy theory has appeal.

My pet theory on the flat Earth is that it's been pushed in order to compile lists of extremely gullible people by scraping social media so that these lists can be used later. For what? Who knows. Targets of scams, marketing, propaganda...

Nah, some AI just figured out it was an easy way to get more clicks on YouTube.

I mention flat earth and anti-vax, because they are conspiracy theories that are not obviously driven by the government's behavior.

I am not too familiar with either, but in my view they are definitely associated with ‘authority’ whether then be mainstream media, government, institutions, etc.

Sure, but where I live, these are still held in high regard, yet anti-vax and flat earth spread here too. I don't think the institutions are the direct drivers of conspiracies.

Perhaps I should have made clearer that it was in particular the word "direct" that I was responding too, not the fact that unethical or shady behavior from a government can trigger long-lasting distrust.