How Flat Earthers Nearly Derailed a Space Photo Book

[Conor Dary]

A highly engaged group of conspiracy theorists can override a fact-based endeavor’s internet ads.

This was a lesson that Benedict Redgrove, a photographer, said he took away from his recent attempt to advertise his space photo project on Facebook and Instagram.

Another lesson was that flat earthers and lunar landing deniers can be difficult to avoid, even when you try.

But after he had taken most of the pictures, he learned that there were more costs than he had expected. So he created a Kickstarter campaign. He had 30 days to raise $189,277. (The way Kickstarter works is that if you meet your goal through donations, you get your money. If you don’t, you get nothing.) To promote the effort, he bought a series of ads on Facebook and Instagram in the $200 to $400 range.

Mr. Redgrove had worked in advertising, photographing cars. But he had never placed an ad before. He learned that he could tell Facebook whom he did — and did not — want to reach. “We specified we didn’t want conspiracy theorists and lunar landing deniers and flat earthers,” he said.


About 24 hours after the ads were approved, he got a notification telling him the ad had been removed. He resubmitted it. It was accepted — and then removed again — 15 or 20 times, he said. The explanation given: He had run “misleading ads that resulted in high negative feedback.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/s...gtype=Homepage

[KevinR]

Wow. And I suspect that many of those flat-earthers are the same people who believe in US government conspiracies. After working for, and with, the Army for 35 years, I can assure you there is no way we can coordinate well enough to pull most of that crap off.