Exposure was an afterthought to astronauts and now they make more aesthetically pleasing images by using basic photography principles (and better digital sensors)
In history there have always been true flat earthers, but they've become rarer and rarer until the Youtube era in fact, when the concept of it became so widespread because it's "funny" and not at all representative of how many people truly believe in it. The whole thing is people laughing at someone that doesn't really exist.
There are people that got roped up in it who were not lunatics, some have since recanted a lot of what they said and mentioned how it happened. It mostly comes down to people “doing their own research” and feeling like theyre being proactive but really Google, Youtube and Facebook sent them down a rabbit hole of related content, which in this case was a “grand conspiracy few people know of”.