“It’s a conspiracy ecosystem,” said Albright, research director at Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Albright gradually followed YouTube’s recommendation engine until he had collected nearly 9,000 videos that had been watched a combined 4 billion times. The 50 most widely viewed mass-shooting conspiracy videos, Albright found, had been viewed 50 million times. “The Florida videos are now taking people to the larger conspiracy space.”And many of them, he said are generating profit for their creators. The most heavily watched videos in Albright’s “conspiracy ecosystem” have been watched tens of millions of times.

Source: Washington Post February 25, 2018 20:20 UTC