When it comes to the spread of cockamamie conspiracy theories, Twitter was a maximum viable product long before Elon Musk paid $44 billion for the keys. But as soon as he took the wheel, Musk removed many of the guardrails Twitter had put in place to keep the craziness in check. Anti-vaxxers used an athlete’s collapse during a game to revive claims that COVID-19 vaccines kill people . ( They don’t .) Freelance journalists spun long threads purporting to show that Twitter secretly supported Democrats in 2020. ( It didn’t .) Musk himself insinuated that the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband was carried out by a jealous boyfriend. ( Nope .) Like a red thread connecting clippings on Twitter’s giant whiteboard, conspiratorial ideation spread far and wide. By some measures more than half of Americans believe at least one tale of a secret cabal influencing events. Some are more plausible than others; a few are even true. But most — from classics like the faked moon landing to new-school stuff like 5G cell towers causing COVID — defy science and logic. And while social-media platforms like Twitter and Meta may help deranged conspiracy theories metastasize , a fundamental question […]
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