I mean, these are clearly bots, sure, but are they cabal bots? How would we know?

But let's say they are, that still leaves two possibilities:

1. They are employing bots to say stupid shit to discount it because it's true. To a degree, this makes sense. I haven't seen very much here to display that anyone understands what actual FE believers think, or what the arguments are. Only a bunch of nonsense about turtles and "flat disk in space, while all other planets are round".

Meanwhile, on X, I can find a few accounts that at least make plausible sounding claims, and that present models that are mostly workable alternatives, at least on the surface. That's not to say there aren't issues, because none of them seem to be able to explain the Southern Hemisphere's stars being different or the lunar eclipse very well. But I digress.

If it's this one, it's working.

2. They are employing bots to make curious normies think the "conspiracy types" are all just nutjobs who think the Earth is flat. This is the more traditional view of the purpose of FE, and also makes sense. While it seems counter-intuitive to a critical thinker, there are plenty of people who will say shit like "oh, that's just some flat Earth nonsense" in response to literally everything that isn't on CNN.

If it's this one, it's working.

And of course, not many are actually "calling out" any disinformation. There is certainly no research in here showing that these are cabal bots owned by 'x' organization that are employing 'y' coordinated talking point.

This thread is basically just people shitting on views that flat earthers don't actually, from what I can tell, hold, or people making grandiose claims that every single person promoting FE is some CIA plant (which ironically will also just drive away certain honest truth seekers), and then there's the people saying we should be more open-minded in response to certain theories like FE (not that we should entertain it all the time, but just that people's response to it here is unfounded).

What isn't here, is anyone doing a dig on these bots and then people saying we should be open-minded to FE in response to that.

What is here, is people dismissing FE out of hand for what clearly appears to be more emotional and/or "political" (in that we don't want to drive people away from our more important research, so many find it better to just ignore, or even attack, FE) reasons.

Many people seem more emotion rather than critical in this thread, which is rare for this forum. At least, that's my observation.