Viewpoint: Twitter takes down conspiracy theorists, finally.

So Twitter decided to ban a number of users, and limit a whole bunch more over a little something called QAnon, which is a conspiracy theory about a "deep state" within the Beltway, who it is claimed are actively working together against Donald Trump.  Apparently it kinda spun off from Pizzagate, which was another idiotic conspiracy theory. 

Conspiracy theories have actually been around a lot longer than you think, going back to the 16th century, and the whole idea the Protestant Reformation, was a deliberate conspiracy against Catholics.  But for so many years, conspiracy theories were regarded, correctly, as carackpot ideas that nobody took seriously, and they didn't spread either, because, well, instant communication wasn't a thing back then.

Perhaps the first conspiracy theory to actually get mainstream attention, so much so that a 1979 US congressional committee even ended up giving it more provenence, was the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't actually kill JFK, but a second shooter actually did.  That's just one of a bunch of conspiracy theories over JFK's assassination, but that one somehow garnered enough mainstream attention, that in 1976, The US House of Representatives, actually set up a committee to investigate both the assaninations of JFK and Martin Luther King, and controversially, said that JFK was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy. 

Since then, we've had absolute tons of conspiracy theories about nearly everything, from the deaths of Elvis Presley and John Lennon, to 9/11, to Sandy Hook, to even the current Covid-19 pandemic, and there have been some absolutely crazy theories put forward about that.

Anyway, back to Twitter, and this is a good first step, well, second step, after removing Alex Jones and Infowars from the platform, but honestly, they and Facebook both need to do more to take down these conspiracy theorists, who use social media to spread deliberate misinformation, and they know they're spreading deliberate misinformation, and we know why they're doing it too, they're doing it to deliberately undermine people's trust in the media, and in official sources of information and to a degree it has worked.  But the fightback is on.  And people on social media are standing up to these stupid conspiracy theories, by demanding proof.

That's how you take them down nowadays.  You can't ignore them anymore, they can spread like wildfire on social media, so you have to demand proof every time.  So I say this, Twitter, Facebook, work with us on taking down conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists. Lets make social media a safe place for the truth.