When I was a younger man, I was interested in conspiracy theories. I didn’t believe in them, but I was interested in them and the people who did believe in them. This was pre-Internet. While there were some big-name conspiracies – “who shot JFK” and “alien autopsies in Area 51” stuff – most of it was in the dark corners of the world: a few nutjobs with pirate radio stations rambling into the desert ether, mimeographed newsletters full of rambling purple prose, and badly edited and barely readable books. I was fascinated both by the horror and credulity of conspiracy theorists. They combined a totalizing belief in a nightmarish fantasy with a profound level of intentional ignorance that I found – and find – chilling.

Today’s conspiracy theorists are out in the open, often in high office. But how did it happen? How did we get here? I believe I have the answer, and the answer is social media.

I.

First, though, I want to talk about why – in the pre-social media world – publishers didn’t warm to conspiratorial content. I think there were two limits: reputation and the law.

Publishers put their names and reputations on the books they publish. If they published some Nazi conspiracy swill, their reputations would take a big hit. “Hi, honey, what did you do today?” “Oh, I published the paranoid ramblings of an antisemitic idiot.” Not exactly a good look in the tony New York literati world.

Also, most booksellers didn’t want that swill in their shop. They, too, were a part of a community. If they started putting neo-Nazi dreck on their bookshelves, they’d have to account for that to their friends, family, and community. Mostly, people would avoid their shop because they didn’t want to work with someone selling such filth. It’s the same reason why your local bookshop doesn’t sell hardcore pornography. What they’d gain isn’t nearly as much as what they’d lose.

While there were dedicated specialist shops for conspiratorial content (as there were for hardcore pornographic content,) the books were, additionally, very amateurish affairs. Badly written, badly edited, and cheaply printed, they were hard to take seriously and easy to dismiss, particularly before the advent of powerful desktop self-publishing tools. (1)

Overall, dealing with conspiracy theorists wasn’t worth the social and business risks for reputable people. But there was more! There was the pesky point of the law.

The US has robust freedom of the press, it is true, but it isn’t complete freedom. The conspiracy theorists were potentially lawsuit machines. The guys who wrote them didn’t care about the niceties of the law. Defamation, copyright infringement, privacy invasion, intentional infliction of emotional distress, incitement… it was all there. When kept in the dirty corners of the press, in wild bookstores where few dare to tread, that were sufficiently out-of-the-way to avoid scrutiny, the content of the books and magazines, no one noticed.  But if the large, influential publishers tried publishing the worst conspiratorial content?  They’d be crushed by the law. (2)

As such, conspiratorial content reached a tiny number of people. It was too risky to publish and sell! Risky to your business and legally troubling. It stayed small, the domain of true believers in an arcane subculture.

II.

So, what would it take for conspiratorial content to reach a wider audience? It would take a system where a person could profit while avoiding social and legal responsibility for what they published. It would help, too, if it was not out in the cold but part of a publication that also published mainstream stories and news. Lastly, it would help if the presentation was identical between the conspiratorial and mainstream content to make it seem they were on the same level so the conspiracy theories could ride the coattails of more legitimate stories.

But who would be a fool enough to create such a system? To take away the social and legal barriers that allowed madmen to spread their disinformation to the profit of scoundrels and the woe of nations?

III.

Often, when people discuss the harms of social media, they do so as either a criticism of the toxic algorithms that create feeds or the lack of moderation that makes so much of social media a toxic hellscape. While true, I think the fundamental issue is deeper and goes back to the law. Specifically, the laws that allow social media companies to publish content without responsibility while collecting profit.

The model law is the Digital Millennium Communications Act from the US. Part of the law was treating Internet service providers and website hosts – including blog hosting sites – like digital printers instead of digital publishers. ISPs, website hosts, and blog hosting sites could not, then, be held accountable for the misdeeds of their users, much like a printer or distributor of traditional media could not be held liable for crimes committed by the people who paid for their printing or shipping services. At the time, it was a good idea. But the law was passed in 1992. There was a great deal they didn’t know about the growth of “the Web 2.0.”

In 2005, Facebook was started. Facebook just assumed the protections of the DMCA even though it was – as are all other social media sites – not simply hosts or distributors of media. The service that hosts my blog doesn’t promote it. The service it provides is simply a bit of server space for me to do as I please. However, when I post on Facebook, Facebook shows my content to other people. It directs my content towards other people’s eyes. The service makes conscious decisions about whom to show it to and puts it into people’s feeds. This is no longer merely hosting a microblogging site. This is publishing a digital magazine. The DMCA wasn’t designed or intended to protect sites like Facebook, X, or even Bluesky. It was designed to protect sites like Substack and your ISP.

As a result, conspiratorial content and intentional misinformation appear alongside well-researched and properly edited work. This side-by-side placing, as well as the overall improvement in digital publishing tools, have erased the old boundaries between the delusional rants of madmen and responsibly produced news. At the same time, the owners of social media can say, “No, no, we’re just hosting it, not publishing it,” though they are, in fact, publishing it. Most notably, Elon Musk claims freedom to spread lies and harmful disinformation as his “absolute free speech advocacy,” but all these tech bro social media scumbags can even say, “We’re defending free speech by spreading libel, lies, and disinformation while inciting violence all over the world!”

Additionally, it means that people who use social media sites – a number that is now in the billions daily – are exposed to libel, lies, disinformation, and incitement to violence. The Washington Post would be shut down if it tried this happy horeshit, but social media gets away with it daily.

Fixing the problem would be easy. Enforce the same laws on social media sites that push content as are enforced on the publishers of books, news, and other media. Don’t allow social media owners to muddy the issue by pretending they’re just hosting blogs. Hold them to the same laws that forbid libel, incitement to violence, media piracy, infliction of emotional distress, false advertising, stalking, etc., that rein in other digital media platforms like news and TV sites. It’s a simple fix, easily done, at least conceptually. Of course, social media magnates would fight back like cornered rats, whine about their lost profits, and try to conflate their crimes with freedom of speech, but such arguments are weak and can be beaten. Even when projected through the very media platforms that sensible legislation would restrict. Even then, their arguments would be weak. And after it was done, we’d see the conspiratorial rats and disinformation goons return to the dark corners of the world.

Notes

(1) Full disclosure: I loved those crazy libertarian nutjob bookshops on a deeply personal level. You could do wild research there that was impossible anywhere else. The five volumes of How to Kill, for instance. And the world-building of conspiratologists is second to none. The stuff is like a series of deeply disturbing modern fantasy political thrillers where a bunch of people also think it’s real. It’s as if QAnon didn’t have the ear of US senators. Disturbing but not particularly dangerous.

(2) Also, as discussed, conspiracy theorists were also the Wrong Kind of People for the big publishers. The dismissal of everyone not part of the publishing class has, I think, much to do with the rise of conspiracy theories. There are no mainstream voices capable of talking to conspiratologists. They are excluded from “serious” publications and media streams.