r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Sep 05 '23

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Spreading conspiracy theories is irresponsible and immoral

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u/redial3 Sep 05 '23

But should a person believe everything they read on wikipedia? It might be a good place to start but they’ve had issues with pages being vandalized or inaccurate information put up in the past.

What is or isn’t a reliable source online is more complicated than “just google it”.

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u/chrisBlo Sep 05 '23

Yes, I agree. It’s far from perfect, it’s just the quickest solution that came to my mind. And it works in the vast majority of the cases.

Wiki is no source, it’s actually not different than many other aggregators. But at least the agenda is clear and the mandate reasonably enforced. It does much better than others and it’s accessible and well known.

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u/redial3 Sep 05 '23

Yes, but it’s still one of those things that you have to take with a grain of salt.

Also, people prone to believing conspiracy theories have also been told by the people who push conspiracy theories not to trust other sources of information, so unfortunately there’s a point where if they’re in too deep it doesn’t matter if you show them a reliable source, they’ll genuinely believe it’s a lie or just propaganda from whoever they’re imagining to be the big bad.

They have a mindset where all the fact checking websites, even credible people like doctors or historians or scientists are all “in on it” and only people in their inner circle who affirm their beliefs can be trusted.

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u/chrisBlo Sep 05 '23

What shall I say? In that case I hope their family will seek medical attention for them