That's going to be their downfall, since its priority seems to be to connect people to the worst of the site as firmly as possible. A year or two ago I became curious about the flat earthers and watched 2 videos to try and figure out if there was any sort of deeper meaning to their superficially ridiculous claims (spoiler: there isn't). YT kept shoving flat earth videos at me for weeks like some sort of ontological crack dealer.
Whether by design or accident the flat earth nonsense has the potential effect of unmooring people from the very notion of an accepted reality; and thus habituating them to the idea that what they inherently know about the world cannot be trusted. It literally pulls the world out from under their feet.
That is, if you can get people to believe or even question that something as fundamental as the shape of the earth is a lie they've been told, then you can effectively "clean-sheet" them. They become blank-canvases upon which you can write the alternative reality of your choice. Not to mention this type of nonsense generates mistrust in the status-quo, as it raises the question among its victims: "who is this 'they' who lied to us about such fundamental and important matters?"
So, if you then claim to be against the status quo, then you have sympathizers who are now open to your message. It thus becomes much easier to write your story onto their now blank canvases and serve as their champion.
Religion has already done that.
But now, all I see recommended is Don Rickles. Literally the whole sidebar except 1 or 2 videos is Don Rickles even if I’m watching a tech video. Drives me nuts.
He's totally 100% serious. Not trolling; not joking.
He buys into a lot of conspiracy theories and he's a pretty paranoid person, in general. He also thinks some conspiracy theories are actually conspiracy theories.
If only we could get everyone to turn it off en masse.
Belief in a flat earth is a dog-whistle for fundamentalist Christians.
So yeah, they don't care about the fact that we can observe the Earth is round or any other proof, their ignorance is proof of their faith.
In fact, most of today's flat-earthers seem to be primarily driven by the arguments from flat-earth claims and nothing more: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/may/27/is-the-earth-...