The problem is that the conspiracy theories are becoming more and more believable. As more and more have come true (Snowden, Iraq WMD, ...), people have less and less reason to doubt them.
That argument practically disappeared from public discourse in a crazy short time span. To me it seemed like the Snowden/NSA stuff was the nail in the coffin for that one.
I don't get the grandparent's Iraq WMD example. That was obvious BS at the time it was being sold to the public. That's an example of propaganda and manipulation of public opinion, but not a conspiracy.
But for most people, these were conspiracy theories. Because the government said they were not true. In the press, in congressional hearings, everywhere. That's enough for most people.
In all honesty though, I've learned I can't use my intuition to predict what people will believe or not. I mean, the Iraq WMD and 9/11 connection stuff was so obviously BS that it was like an absurdist comedy routine. But 70% of Americans believed Saddam was connected to 9/11. And I don't know what the WMD story success rate was but it had to be higher right?
Most people think about politics in terms of how much they can trust individual politicians to tell the truth or maybe in terms of spin and narratives and talking points. But we live in a world where people like Vladislav Surkov exist [1][2][3], the professionals are working at a level that is barely understandable to the rest of us.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov [2] http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21577421-what-departure... (from 2013, Surkov is currently a personal advisor to Putin) [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyop0d30UqQ
What a delightful phrase!
What's changed is that we have more leaked documents, more ability for whistleblowers to mass broadcast anonymously, and more tools for immediately uncovering discrepancies in people's stories. So the rumor mill probably is a little more accurate than in prior eras, but it was probably already reasonably reliable even before the advent of WikiLeaks or whatever.
The other difference is that people now have a lot more incentive to turn to the rumor mill (e.g. r/dncleaks, r/wikileaks, r/the_donald) since the mainstream media has been blatantly ignoring a lot of this stuff, and with the advent of Facebook they can spread whatever they find a lot faster.
I sometimes have to turn to foreign news like Russia Times (RT), Al Jazeera, and the Israeli Haaretz news (and news from many other countries) to see news stories that are effectively blocked out in the USA. I do look with appropriate scepticism at all foreign and domestic news sources, but when major stories are not covered in domestic news sources there is no choice but to look around the web.
It drives me a little crazy when friends who watch MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, etc. think that they are getting a full and accurate picture of world events.
Um, that is, numerically more are provably correct, not more as a percent. There are far more conspiracy theories (of which I am aware) than there were in the past. I don't know that the fraction that are provably correct is any higher now.