“Believing the Earth is flat in of itself is not necessarily harmful, but it comes packaged with a distrust in institutions and authority more generally,” she added. “Their algorithms make it easy to end up going down the rabbit hole, by presenting information to people who are going to be more susceptible to it.” “There’s a lot of helpful information on YouTube but also a lot of misinformation,” Landrum said.

Landrum, who presented her results at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC, said she did not think YouTube was doing anything overtly wrong, but said that if the site wanted to help it could tweak its algorithm to show more accurate information. The Flat Earth conference in Denver, Colorado, in November 2018.

One way or another, the interviewees found themselves believers and before long were asking “where is the curve?” and “why is the horizon always at eye level?” Landrum said one of the most popular Flat Earth videos, “200 proofs Earth is not a spinning ball” appears to be effective because it offers arguments that appeal to so many mindsets, from biblical literalists and conspiracy theorists to those of a more scientific bent. Some said they watched the videos only in order to debunk them but soon found themselves won over by the material. The interviews revealed that most had been watching videos about other conspiracies, with alternative takes on 9/11, the Sandy Hook school shooting and whether Nasa really went to the moon, when YouTube offered up Flat Earth videos for them to watch next. “The only person who didn’t say this was there with his daughter and his son-in-law and they had seen it on YouTube and told him about it,” said Asheley Landrum, who led the research at Texas Tech University. Of the 30, all but one said they had not considered the Earth to be flat two years ago but changed their minds after watching videos promoting conspiracy theories on YouTube. Interviews with 30 attendees revealed a pattern in the stories people told about how they came to be convinced that the Earth was not a large round rock spinning through space but a large flat disc doing much the same thing. Flat Earth rising: meet the people casting aside 2,500 years of science – video

Why flat earth is wrong