Conspiracy theories are all over social media in Indonesia. But there is one platform, more than any other, where they truly thrive: Instagram.Open the explore tab and right there, sandwiched between an EDM-driven recut of football highlights and an artful rendition of someone's lunch, is a post that makes me so mad, so furious, that I can't help but comment. This is because while Instagram got famous as a place to share your #foodporn, it's also the home of incredibly sensationalist news and outright false conspiracy theories. And there's a reason you're more likely to find this stuff in your Instagram feed than on, say, on Facebook or Twitter.Instagram, as a platform, defies fact checking. You can't add a link to an IG post, and you can't write 1,000 hyperlinked words to back up your claims. So what we're left with are dubious memes, fake or misleading photos, and inflammatory allegations that would be fact-checked (hopefully) before publication by an actual media company (as opposed to an IG account full of Pepe memes and flat Earth "facts").About half of all Indonesians online get their news from social media. That's significantly more than in the US, where cable TV networks like FOX News and CNN still pull big numbers. We can talk about how this creates an information bubble, how you're more likely to see stories and images in-line with stuff you've already clicked on or shared, but that's been discussed so much that we all know we're living in a bubble, and most of us still refuse to do anything about it.What concerns me is how fast this stuff spreads on Instagram. A quick scroll through my explore tab uncovered images claiming that a sniper tried to kill FPI leader Habib Rizieq, that the Earth it totally flat because of its orientation to Mecca, and, of course, more racist stuff about the Jakarta election. And now, because I clicked on these posts, Instagram is going to show more an even larger percentage of conspiracy theories and racist memes in my Explore tab. Now, I'm stuck with our own version of truther conspiracy theories and some weird antisemitic nationalist nonsense about how Hitler was great.It's all so damaging to our sense of what is factually accurate that it's starting to have real-world implications. It's enough that experts are characterizing some of this stuff as propaganda instead of tired old conspiracy theories, entirely because it has an actual impact on our life."In my opinion, accounts that spread issues [false information] cannot be grouped together with conspiracy theorists, but it falls under propaganda," said Irwan Rosmawan, the admin of Sekoci, an online group dedicated to debunking fake news and hoaxes. "Propaganda has real-world effects that can bring about consequences, both immediate or in the future."So remember, you can't believe everything you see on Instagram. Oh, and the world is still round.— With additional reporting from Hanson O'Haver, whose writing in "Why Instagram Became the Perfect Breeding Ground for Conspiracy Theories" inspired this article.
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