Abbie Richards didn't set out to become an influencer. She "fell into it" after she posted a chart of conspiracy theories on honeymoon sex videoInstagram.
"I had been talking to some guy on Tinder about conspiracy theories," she told Mashable. "We both hate conspiracy theories, and we were having a conversation of, like, if you had to believe in one, which would it be?... I said, I don't like that all conspiracy theories are just bundled as the same thing. Like, I really feel like there are layers to this. I have to draw this."
The upside-down triangle chart that resulted went viral in September 2020. Richards also runs an anti-conspiracy theory TikTok account called Tofology, which currently has more than 200,000 followers.
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The post that started it all draws distinct lines between what we might think of as harmless conspiracy theories (like aliens building Stonehenge) and conspiracies that can have a detrimental effect on society as a whole. The bottom tip corresponds to ideas that are grounded in reality — things that actually happened, like COINTELPRO and NSA mass surveillance. As you move up the chart, you go through various points — the "Speculation Line," "Leaving Reality," "Science Denial," and "The Antisemitic Point of No Return," each of which pairs with various conspiracies like Area 51 and chemtrails. At the top of the triangle are ideas completely detached from reality — dangerous beliefs about QAnon, the deep state, Bill Gates microchipping, and Holocaust denial. Those who believe the theories at the top should get help, the chart says.
"I just personally made this chart in a way that made sense in my brain, where I organized it," Richards said. She sent it to some of her friends, who loved it. Then, she posted it on her account, and "the world lost its mind for a little bit."
"All of a sudden people were asking me to answer their questions and asking for explanations on things," Richards said. "So I kind of got thrown into the world accidentally." Richards, who is 24 years old, is studying the intersection of climate change and disinformation at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. For most of her posts, she does hours of research.
Her TikToks range from debunking the false claims that a group of men decided April 24 would be "National Rape Day" to her series called QAnon 101, where she breaks down the false beliefs of QAnon followers. In each of them, Richards uses her expertise as a science communicator and deploys a combination of internet research, reading, and reviewing with experts to make sure she's getting it right.
"I'm very lucky in that I have a lot of support systems around me and I have a lot of people who believe in me, and the more success that I've found, the more resources I've had," Richards said. "So I have experts I can just ask anything to, which is very helpful."
She says she lives "in a constant state of fear of like just making things worse." So she runs many of her videos by several experts to ensure she's conveying the correct information.
Richards entered into the world of debunking at what turned out to be a crucial time. Just a few months after her conspiracy theory chart went viral, conspiracy theorists who falsely believed Donald Trump won the election flooded the gates of the U.S. Capitol building. During the now-infamous Jan. 6 riots, more than 140 people were injured and five people died.
In this TikTok video, Richard's breaks down the TikTok videos claiming that a group of men decided April 24th would be "National Rape Day." Credit: ABBIE RICHARDS/TIKTOK Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center and author of How to Lose the Information War, told Mashable that while the work people like Richards are doing online might not necessarily change the minds of staunch conspiracy theorists, it is still wildly important.
"It's not as if she is debunking these conspiracy theories for the audience that might be susceptible to them, but she is strengthening the awareness and media literacy, as are many of the other influencers who do this, of the people that might potentially fall into a vulnerable category, or maybe haven't quite picked a side yet," Jankowicz said. "They're doing it in ways that are accessible to normal people that aren't weighted with too much technical language. And I think that's a really important way to communicate about this stuff."
"You're never going to catch me saying that I believe my work will get people out [of conspiracy-thinking] or change anybody's mind," Richards said. "Because I don't think anything has the power to do that unless somebody wants to. But if somebody is trying to get out, I want to be a resource to them. If they're having doubts, like I want them to find me."
Nathalie Van Raemdonck, a 31-year-old from Brussels, Belgium, who researches the spread of misinformation and online radicalization, says she feels similarly. For a while, she was having back-and-forth conversations with conspiracy theorists in comments and her direct messages on Instagram. But nothing was changing, and it just left her feeling helpless. So she started @anti_conspiracy_memewars, which posts memes that debunk conspiracy theories to over 26,300 followers on Instagram.
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"My idea was to also provide a counter narrative that if you, as a regular person, you're scrolling through your feed, you see conspiracy, conspiracy, conspiracy, anti-conspiracy, conspiracy, conspiracy," Van Raemdonck told Mashable. "So it's not for the hardcore believers, but it's really meant for pre-bunking. It's really meant for providing the tools for people to provide counter narrative in their personal ecosystem."
Pre-bunking, or the practice of exposing people to misinformation and offering them an explanation of why it is not true before they see the misinformation in the wild, has become a popular tool for many anti-conspiracy theorists in their fight to stop the spread of misinformation. For instance, Van Raemdonck posted memes about how the risks of dying of COVID-19 are far greater than getting blood clots in the aftermath of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine news as well as other posts about the spread of vaccine misinformation.
Like Van Raemdonck, Richards says she imagines her audience as someone who has friends and family members who believe in conspiracy theories, but they don't believe in any themselves.
"So I kind of write for them, to help them understand what's going on," Richards said. "Because they, in reality, are the people that would get somebody out [of believing conspiracy theories]."
Dr. Karen Douglas, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent, told Mashable that it's "very difficult" to change a conspiracy theorist's beliefs, even if an anti-conspiracy theorist does their work well.
"People can find ways to rationalize debunking efforts so that they can maintain their beliefs. For instance, people might reject efforts to change their mind if they believe that the efforts are also part of the conspiracy," Douglas said. "Or, the believer can add layers and layers of extra information which make the conspiracy theory difficult to refute. People are quite good at being able to select and interpret information that confirms what they already believe."
So, while what Richards and Van Raemdonck are doing isn't necessarily going to change anyone's strong conspiracy views, it can help to prebunk, to inform people who are on the edge of believing, and to help arm friends of conspiracy theorists with the information they need to bring their loved ones back from the conspiracy brink.
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Richards believes that misinformation spreads on TikTok for a variety of reasons, including that videos are short, and they do well when they're easily to follow, boiled-down, and sharable — which doesn't always leave a ton of room for nuance.
"People love simple answers, right?" Richards said. "It's just a reflection of human emotion. When they see it, it's appealing, so they gravitate towards it."
But it's also a question of how the platform's algorithm decides what videos to put in front of its users. Last year, a TikTok spokesperson told Voxthat it recommends users follow accounts based on their own behavior, which is similar to how other platforms do it. But TikTok has recently came under fire for prompting usersto follow far-right extremist accounts. In February, the platform announced new measures to help stop the spread of misinformation, including adding banners to unverified content and notifying users before they share what could be misleading content, NBC News reported.
Another challenge is that people are more likely to fall into believing misinformation than they are to listen to someone debunk it. Dr. Dolores Albarracín, a professor of psychology, business, and medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign who studies behavior, communication, and persuasion, conducted a "meta-analysis of the impact of misinformation presented in the news" and published her findings in a 2017 paper.
"We collected all the experiments that had presented misinformation that was new to participants. We then estimated the odds that if you present misinformation to somebody, they will believe it. And the odds were 266 to 1," Albarracín told Mashable.
That means that over 99% of the misinformation attempts succeeded, while the odds of correcting misinformation are about 6 to 1, meaning just about 86% of the time a correction will succeed.
"The misinformation will take a hold of your mind. It will likely stick," because, Albarracín says, "misinformation on novel topics create a trace that is difficult to get rid of. I like the analogy of fresh clay and how difficult it would be to change its shape once dry. In addition, in the U.S., misinformation and conspiracy theories are verified within an informational ecosystem that reinforces the misinformation. Your friend told you about it and now you confirm it by watching Fox News."
That's part of the reason why it is so important for anti-conspiracy activists to make sure they aren't also spreading misinformation by accident. Hence, the hours of researchRichards puts in.
It's not always misinformation professionals who are doing the debunking. Others can combat the spread of misinformation by focusing on what they actually do know and working to educate others on it.
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For instance, Jessica, a 25-year-old from Wisconsin who runs the TikTok account @bloodbathandbeyond and who preferred not to give her last name to protect her identity, primarily debunks human trafficking hoaxes. When rumors began to spread that the U.S. Postal Service was sending people's locations to sex traffickers, Jessica debunked the story by first saying it was wrong, then saying why it was harmful.
"It perpetuates a false stereotype of what sex trafficking victims actually look like, and that is not good because it directly hurts sex trafficking victims," Jessica said in a video that received over 44,000 views. She also pointed to ways the viewer could debunk that video themselves by searching online and finding reputable sources to guide them through what's actually going on.
"I am a victim of trafficking," Jessica told Mashable. "Not Taken-style, traditional trafficking that a lot of movies and stuff will come up with, and I won't go into too many details, but I was in a situation with an ex-boyfriend of mine and that relationship did turn into a trafficking situation."
Jessica didn't know she was a victim of trafficking until after the relationship ended. She did research and discovered that the lack of general knowledge and the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding human trafficking are part of "a much larger problem."
"The misinformation is that not only are people not looking for the right signs, but some people who are victims don't even know they're victims because they don't know what the true signs of trafficking are," Jessica said.
Now, she does about four or five hours of research for each of her posts. She shows her work in her videos — using sources that range from mainstream media outlets to organizations like Polaris, a nonprofit that works to combat and prevent sex and labor trafficking in North America. And she uses this information to debunk the conspiracies about trafficking and what a trafficking victim looks like.
There isn't one simple solution to redirecting the conversation around conspiracy theories online, but Jessica thinks there needs to be more media literacy taught at an early age to teach kids to debunk lies online on their own.
"If we can work toward better educating children on being critical of the media that they consume, I think we can head in the right direction."
"If we can work toward better educating children on being critical of the media that they consume, I think we can head in the right direction," she said. "But whether or not that's something we can realistically achieve? I'm not really sure."
Richards agrees, saying that media literacy, digital literacy, education, and pressuring tech companies to better moderate content are all important steps, but none of those alone can solve the core problem.
"It would be really nice if we could blame one thing and fix it," Richards said "But fundamentally, conspiracy theories are the result of a culture that is responding to extreme amounts of anxiety and inequality. There's social and economic anxieties that exist and define our system, our society as a whole, and people are going to continue to turn to stories that make them feel better rather than going and understanding that like legitimate, complete social changes needed."
"Conspiracy theories are the result of a culture that is responding to extreme amounts of anxiety and inequality."
For now, though, anti-conspiracy theory influencers are making the internet a more palatable place to be — and they have the chance to make real, positive change.
"This could balance out the availability of misinformation and accurate information," Albarracín said. "It also creates new social identities — debunkers — and this can reduce the salience of sheer popularity based on likes. However, not having the misinformation out there would be better."
Going forward, none of the experts think the fight against misinformation is anywhere close to over. But having additional people fighting from different angles — academia, the public sector, and people in the private sector, too — is helpful.
"The question is, are they enough? Are we enough?" Jankowicz said. "And sometimes I feel really great about what we're able to achieve and sometimes I feel really powerless."