As ridiculous as FE seems, prima facie, until it's proven false, I keep my mind open to plausible explanations for why:
A) the moon landings were all fake and we've never "been back"
B) there are no actual photos of the entire earth from space (unless you believe the sizes of the continents are changing by 30-60% every decade or so)
C) the only people on earth that we give billions of dollars to, to go to space, are faking any, let alone much (or all) of the footage, using green screens, parabolic "zero gravity" flights, actual hair spray to make their hair stand up, underwater studios (unless you believe in air bubbles in space)
You might say "but these items have better explanations than FE". Well let's hear those theories also. Let's not shoot down those who are proposing an outlandish, yet mostly comprehensive, theory, one that explains these anomalies as well as a plethora of others, like how did they use radio frequencies that don't even purportedly bounce off the ionosphere to communicate hundreds of miles during WWII, how can the horizon be seen above an item whose entirety should be hidden behind it, why is Antarctica, aside from a tiny portion, entirely off limits to most civilians, how was Felix Baumgartner able to slowly float up to nearly 30 miles without drifting a thousand or more miles because of the earth's rotation, etc.
Suggestions that these things are not even worthy of discussion, on a forum dedicated to conspiracy theories, have to be disingenuous.
Original Research
Let's not also forget that FE researchers are literally the only conspiracy theorists doing original research. These people will buy lasers that cost thousands of dollars, cameras, etc., and go to some large body of water (large lakes, bays, etc.) where they can test their hypothesis with an actual experiment. Everything else I see on here is pure speculation, or videos of interviews involving various professionals with dubious backstories (Malone, etc.).
Does it Matter
Pertaining the "would it even matter" argument, you honestly don't need a lukewarm IQ to imagine how much it would matter, if FE was real.
Principles
Most of us are here because we couldn't speak freely elsewhere, because "hate has no place on our platform" type communist bullshit. Now we're going to make the same kind of rules, especially banning arbitrary content that is desired by a clear majority, on a platform with already-existing mechanisms for getting rid of low quality postd (downvoting, hiding)? If FE posts are banned, this place is no better than TGA, and don't even pretend to be pro constitution when you can't even stand up for free speech about a conspiracy theory in a conspiracy theory forum.
I'm out of here, for good, if FE is banned. Aside from spam, illegal, doxxing, banning has no place on our platform.
Then why not ban those users for their behavior? Why not set some rules about posting behavior, so that one person doesn't own half the board? That's not censorship, regulating post velocity, using some technology to help reduce alternate accounts, etc.
I support this.
I have no problem debating FE, but that's not what these people are doing.
They're presenting bad faith arguments in order to demoralize and gaslight people with legitimate questions.
It's still a vague guideline so I would suggest a strike system, but that's only if mods want to spend that kind of time on this mess.
Well you suck at debating so theres a little problem.
I don't think your sentiment reflects mine. I'm suggesting that we throttle posting velocity and/or band users that are spamming and upvoting their own posts with alternate accounts. I don't think we can make an objective judgment on a subjective quality ("bad faith") of somebody's post. That's censorship. If I say that clowns are from another dimension, who is anybody else to ban me based on the assumption that I am making the claim in bad faith. That's what down votes are for. If somebody says clowns are from another dimension and tons of people are up voting the post, then there might be some merit to it. Yes, there are memes and sometimes things will be up voted simply for their sheer meme value, but I haven't really seen that is presenting a major problem with sliding. The biggest offender in that world seems to be triplicate posts by the same group of users on the same subject, which has the effect of pushing other topics completely off the page.
You're correct, we're not on the same page.
I don't see much problems with spamming, at least at current levels. The problem I see is that we are trying to have a forum where ideas (often radical ones) are being explored to determine hidden truth. That necessarily involves a certain amount of suspension of disbelief; of dropping one's guard.
FE proponents (perhaps exclusively) are not here for good faith discussion; they're taking advantage of the good faith to gaslight people into doubting the idea of objective evidence, their own senses, and possibly even the idea of Truth itself.
It doesn't matter that they aren't spamming more than they are; what they're doing is insidious and long term. If they can undermine our ability to evaluate facts by constantly tweaking their arguments to account for our last argument, then every discussion of any unprovable topic is reduced to a shouting match.
That's what they want: ideological infighting.
"If you don't believe what I say, or if you refute it, you're a shill/fed/bot".
It's already taking hold.
Maybe a better way to deal with it is a stickied thread for topics such as these. That way all the evidence can be archived and they can't just keep bringing up the same points to try to trick neophytes.
People could say that IS censorship.
If it's not applied equally, then I agree, but as long as it's applied to everybody, regardless of the topic, I don't think it's censorship to throttle somebody's post velocity. For example, if you were only allowed to make one post per hour, or if you were only allowed to make a certain number of posts based on your karma level, etc., meaning new users can't post as often, etc., and especially if posting removed some of your karma, meeting that there was a cost associated with posting, so that if you build up a bunch of karma, it wouldn't give you a license to post a bunch of spam all of the sudden.
That's an interesting idea! Further, a new(ish) account could be given a limitation on creating posts that's "free," after which it costs them fake internet points. (Which aren't so fake if you lose status to post, go back to being a handshake, etc)
I like this idea because it gives people choice and freedom :)
I have no idea if it's possible with the software this site runs on, or if mods can create that on one .win without changing everything across the whole platform. Theoretically, posts could be handled separately from comments, and there might be some rationale for that.
This could make modding it less tedious ...
Yes. Except the mods. Constant changing of diapers is not only tedious, but not always possible.
This is why I think moving the topic to c/FlatEarthResearch makes the most sense.
Yes thats what we need more authority like reddit. Thats working out so well.