NASAThis article is a part of Apollo: A Lunar Legacy, a multi-part collection that explores the technological advances behind Apollo 11, their affect on modern-day, and what’s subsequent for the moon.
For anybody who has taken an American historical past class, the moon touchdown was a type of pivotal chapters that outlined the story of the nation, and even the world. It was, as Neil Armstrong described it within the second, “one giant leap for mankind” — and in line with some folks, it by no means occurred.
The concept that the moon touchdown was a hoax obtained its first (slight) brush with the mainstream in 1976 when Bill Kaysing, a former technical author at Rocketdyne, self-published a guide titled We Never Went to the Moon. Perhaps as a result of the Watergate scandal left America distrustful of the federal government, and maybe as a result of Kaysing’s time with Rocketdyne (which equipped NASA with engines for the Saturn rocket), the guide struck a chord with a small however fervent slice of the inhabitants (a 2001 Gallup ballot estimated that 6 % of Americans doubted the authenticity of the lunar touchdown).
Kaysing’s proof is spurious, at finest. He features a image from the touchdown with the pitch-black void within the background, a caption asking “Stars? Where are the STARS?” As astronomer Phil Plait defined in a radical takedown of moon touchdown theories, the cameras from the lunar touchdown, set to a quick publicity because of the vivid lighting of the moon’s touchdown, wouldn’t seize the faint mild of distant stars. In a 1994 Wired function on the then present state of moon touchdown conspiracy theories, Oscar successful particular results guru Dennis Muren dissects the declare that the touchdown was filmed in a studio; Kaysing responded “Perhaps this guy [Muren] was part of the cover-up. Anything is possible.” Anything, it appears, besides males strolling on the moon.
50 years after the occasion, conspiracy theories relating to the moon touchdown persist, and conspiracy theories on the whole are thriving. Pro athletes like Kyrie Irving and Steph Curry have entertained the concept the Earth may be flat or the moon touchdown was staged. A idea {that a} pizza parlor was truly a entrance for a kid sex-slave facility led to an armed man coming into the restaurant and demanding the discharge of the youngsters. Conspiracy theories that vaccines trigger well being issues have truly spurred a decline in vaccinations and a resurgence of measles.

I’ve been getting a number of bs for this. But I don’t imagine we (USA) have landed on the moon. There is a number of proof that factors in the direction of a pretend moon touchdown
— youngjerry (@_young_jerry) July 16, 2019

How is it attainable, in an age the place so many individuals have unfettered entry to a lot info, that these concepts proceed to unfold? While the web might supply the power to entry info, the actual nature of social media permits misguided conspiracy theories to unfold.
Social media has lowered the barrier to entry for content material
Message boards and boards have been protected havens for esoteric communities, together with conspiracy theorists, for so long as the web has been round. In the ‘90s, one imagines that PizzaGate might have been restricted to a dingy Geocities web page buried at the hours of darkness corners of the online. Recently, nevertheless, these theories have unfold like a plague throughout the huge social media platforms — Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and so on. — that now dominate on-line life.
If you want proof that these platforms have been the vectors for the contagion, look no additional than their very own confessions. Facebook, having taken criticism for its position within the unfold of “Fake news” throughout the 2016 presidential election, has made public efforts to fight misinformation on the location. YouTube has lengthy been a platform for conspiracy theorists to put up movies pushing their views, and the location’s algorithms helped flow into these movies to common customers within the type of suggestions, and the corporate not too long ago vowed to stem the tide of blatantly false info.

What is it about social media that makes it such fertile floor for conspiracies to develop? First, they supply a low barrier to entry for anybody who needs to disseminate content material. When Bill Kaysing needed to place his concepts forth to the general public, he needed to self-publish them, with out the help of a publishing home to deal with manufacturing, distribution, and advertising. Nowadays, anybody with an web connection can add a video to YouTube. In 2019, if you wish to make your case that the moon touchdown was a hoax or that the course of historical past is directed by a large, sentient crystal, it’s easy to add a video and put it in entrance of 1000’s and even thousands and thousands of individuals.
Content creators would possibly produce conspiracy theories, however the shoppers are simply as vital to spreading it.

That mentioned, whereas content material creators would possibly produce conspiracy theories, the shoppers of that content material are simply as vital in spreading it. If I have been to purchase a replica of Kaysings’ guide within the ‘70s, I might have simply that: One copy. I may mortgage it to associates, or perhaps purchase ten extra copies to reward at a Christmas get together — in all probability to pained grins — however finally my attain could be restricted.
Today, if I learn an article about how vaccines trigger autism and I’m inclined to imagine it, I may share the article on-line, spreading it out amongst my social media following. Users on Facebook and Twitter who discover themselves enchanted by a conspiratorial work can distribute it to everybody they know, and all of these folks can distribute it to everybody they know, a viral transmission with no enter or oversight. Social media reduce gatekeepers out of the content material enterprise, with out contemplating whether or not barbarians would possibly present up on the gates.
Social media encourages group identification … and group battle
The lovely promise of social media platforms is that they carry folks collectively. Former classmates or relations can share the each day particulars of their lives, whether or not miles or continents aside. People who really feel intellectually or culturally remoted the place they stay can hunt down like-minded people all around the world. Emotional bonding and mental trade have been the imaginative and prescient of the Facebook period, and for some time within the early 2010s, which appeared to be a superb factor. When the Arab Spring was in full bloom, for instance, commentators lauded the facility of social media in serving to protestors mobilize.
But simply as social media helped the youth of authoritarian international locations share concepts and manage protests, it has additionally been a boon for the conspiracy-inclined to seek out fellow believers. The mechanisms of social media don’t merely assist to seek out like-minded and share concepts with them. They encourage folks to assist concepts they already agree with and condemn these they don’t.
Most main social media platforms present customers with means to commend or condemn content material. The purest expression of that is Reddit’s upvotes and downvotes; with only a click on of an arrow pointing up or down, a consumer can categorical their settlement or disagreement with a put up, and feedback that obtain a major variety of downvotes would possibly even be “hidden” from view. Facebook permits customers to react to posts, and whereas there isn’t a “thumbs down” out there, the “angry face” can fill that area of interest.
Other platforms like Twitter and Instagram would possibly restrict the out there reactions to “likes,” however the final consequence of those methods is a binary response to content material, both approving or disapproving. Even although Twitter doesn’t embrace a button for disliking tweets, the Twitter neighborhood has developed its personal methods to sign disapproval: “Yikes,” “Oof,” and “Sir, this is a Wendy’s” are among the many inventory phrases used to shortly sign disapproval of a put up.
As a outcome, nuanced dialogue on social media is a rarity; inflexible ideological rallying is the coin of the realm, and that’s the kind of atmosphere that conspiracy theorists thrive in, as a result of they require enemies. Conspiracies aren’t merely secret actions, however ones carried about by nefarious powers, in opposition to whom the conspiracy theorists should be vigilant.
In one of many seminal texts on the historical past of conspiracy theories, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, historian Richard Hofstadter notes that:
The paranoid spokesman sees the destiny of conspiracy in apocalyptic phrases—he traffics within the beginning and dying of complete worlds, complete political orders, complete methods of human values. He is all the time manning the barricades of civilization. He continuously lives at a turning level. Like non secular millennialists he expresses the anxiousness of those that live via the final days and he’s typically disposed to set a date for the apocalypse.
Social media is a battlefield, and that setting fits conspiracy theories simply advantageous. To see this in motion, one want solely browse some conspiracy communities on-line. In a specific anti-vaccination Facebook group (with 36,000 members), the posts don’t merely declare that vaccines are ineffective and even unsafe, however accuse vaccines of being a eugenics program run by transhumanists pursuing immortality. The “vaccine industry” works not solely via “propaganda and censorship” but additionally via “coercion and the threat of violence.” Posts expressed worry that police or navy officers would possibly come to peoples’ homes to power vaccinations on them. The information that Facebook would crack down on miracle cures and vaccine misinformation was greeted with was met with cries of censorship.
Reddit has been a preferred website for conspiracy communities. The common /r/conspiracy subreddit at the moment has 895,000 subscribers, however extra particular communities like /r/MandelaEffect and /r/Retconned (each give attention to the Mandela Effect), handle 137,000 and 32,000 members, respectively. The website can be dwelling to among the extra fervent conspiracy rhetoric: There are whole subreddits, corresponding to /r/WatchRedditDie and /r/SubredditCancer, devoted to the concept Reddit’s admins or different insidious powers are manipulating the location to advance agendas. When a website will get quarantined or banned for violating Reddit’s site-wide insurance policies, it’s seen as proof of a bigger plan to stifle sure views.
The genie is out of the bottle
Social media platforms are actually making an effort to manage the unfold of misinformation on their websites, however even when they tweak algorithms to maintain conspiracy theories from reaching mainstream customers, the enclaves of conspiracy pondering are already established. Society is in a wierd age the place actuality is tough to agree on, and it’s solely going to get stranger. Machine studying is making it simpler to create convincing, pretend movies (deepfakes) that might erode folks’s belief in actuality much more. In this way forward for unreality, folks will search one thing to latch on to, and conspiracy theories will supply neighborhood, and a comforting sense of order in a time of chaos.