22 Conspiracies That Were Proven To Be Real, As Shared By Folks Online

throwingplaydoh said:
Apple purposefully slowed down existing phones when they released a new model to get more sales.

cheif702 replied:
The craziest part is that other companies have been doing similar malicious things for decades. There was a massive agreement in the 40s by lightbulb companies to start making their light bulbs burn out faster, but pass the new designs as innovation. They did it because they had essentially made the best thing they could at the time with the technology they had, and people didn't need to keep buying lightbulbs. I think it's called planned obsolescence.

Treestroyer said: Scientology’s invasion on the US government. Project Snow White.

ForgotMyNameAh replied: Scientology is scary. An untaxed/unregulated cult that has so much money and resources that have to buy buildings and leave them empty so it they don't have as many billions in their accounts. Hiding assets. Have turned at least one town into a ghost town by buying buildings for "offices" or something. Having no actual use, and leaving towns full of empty buildings.

They will spy on you by moving people in next door. They have so many lawyers, politicians, police, influential celebrities in their pocket.

I think the former face of scientology said they sent people to knock on every door in his neighborhood to "warn" them he's a pedophile.

The power, reach and money is terrifying.

Oh-Oh-Ophelia said:
The tobacco industry silencing scientists and creating false studies to say smoking isn't harmful several decades ago.

jefftak7 replied:
Soda companies did the same thing with sugar.

Koupers replied:
The Automotive and Oil companies have been doing the same thing with Climate change since at least the 1970s.

camr0se4 said:
Britney Spears being silenced and abused for years

Hausgebrauch replied:
Yeah, I gotta admit that the #FreeBritney movement started out as the usual internet b******t, where fans with an unhealthy obsession overanalyzed every little thing and said in all seriousness things like: "Her dad hired a lookalike that is now posting videos on Instagram for her, so that we think she is happy!" or "She blinks in a certain way, that means, if you divide the number of blinks by seven, add her birthdate and use the Kellog's decoder ring from 1964 on it, she needs help!", but then the right people took a rational look at it and it turned out there really was something going on and now she actually is free again.

People in Toronto's Gay Village thought there was a serial killer targeting the local gay population. They went to police and the concern was dismissed. Turns out it was a serial killer.

I’m an engineer (semi related to the story), a guy I worked with years before the Snowden realization would tape over his laptop camera, disable mics, etc. He was thought to be a crazy tinfoil conspiracy guy. Turns out he worked on some small portions of black projects much earlier in his career and started doing this ever since those years.

Amurp18 said:
Social media websites shadow-ban opinions they disagree with

Impressive-Hunt-2803 replied:
Facebook whistleblowers have come out admitting right-wing media and right-wing politicians are being allowed to post things that would get other people banned because they're popular and get a lot of interactions, which makes Facebook money.
The bans are heavily lopsided, as facebook algorithms and some key figures in facebooks management favour right-wing media.
Right-wingers *complain* about getting banned more, but the numbers don't add up, not according to any available data. Not according to any metric besides the feelings of fox news commentators. But because their feelings don't care about facts, it's easy to ignore.

How about when Johnson and Johnson knew that their talc powder had too much asbestos in it which can cause cancer and they kept selling it to be used on babies. They're still getting sued for mesothelioma and ovarian cancer (lots of women used it on their lady parts).

The CIA used military personnel with diagnoses of everything from depression to PTSD and even schizophrenia as guinea pigs for experimental medicines and treatments. They once gave a group of mentally ill men massive doses of LSD and left them all in a room for several days just to see what would happen. One survivor wrote that he spent those days perceiving the other men as living corpses and that the walls were covered in blood. There is no accurate number for how many people were killed or otherwise traumatized for life.

Project MKUltra began in 1953 and continued for 20 years, only finally being dismantled in 1973.

The CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran to install a Shah, who was more friendly to the US in the 1950s.

Wazula42 said:
Oil and car companies suppressing green energy, buying and dismantling public transit, and burying grim climate data

alonelygrapefruit replied:
I have a personal conspiracy theory for ya. The oil and gas industry is paying moderators of big subreddits to allow propaganda posts they write about carbon footprints and personal climate responsibility to stay on the front page. I've seen so many suspicious highly upvoted posts about how to reduce your carbon footprint and about how individual consumers are the problem. We know that the idea of a carbon footprint was invented by the oil and gas industry to shift blame from them on to the average consumer, so I'm very suspicious about posts promoting the idea. It is very possible that these posts are innocent and just people repeating the idea that was pushed to them but it all just seems too convenient for the oil and gas industry.

One you’ve never heard of. There were tales at my high school of “The 100 Hall”, where all the halls with numbered rooms and lockers started at 200 and went up, so there was no 100 hall. The wild story was that it’s underground, built to be a bomb shelter with stored non-perishables, and had entrances in the auditorium and gym.

Turns out, absolutely true. The one aspect of it that didn’t pan out was the attached tunnel that led to the science building at the local university.

Haven't seen anyone talk about Malcolm X's assassination. An NYPD former officer talked about how NYPD and FBI worked together to get his bodyguards removed so that an assassination could take place.

The FBI and local law enforcement stalked, harassed, and blackmailed MLK Jr.

They tried to get him to kill himself. They assassinated a leader of the black panthers in Chicago and then concocted bogus criminal charges against all the witnesses of the murder to lock them up and discredit them. They had undercover LEOs infiltrate basically every single social justice movement and had a whole playbook based around how to make those movements look more radical/violent/dangerous than they actually are to discredit them. Undercover officers and confidential informants at protests throw bricks or try to start violence. Local law enforcement, prosecutors, and the FBI all lied to judges, juries, grand juries, legislatures, and congress saying they never did things like this.

People had to break into an FBI field office and steal documents to prove they were actually doing this stuff and had to keep their identities secret for decades so they wouldn’t be prosecuted or persecuted for their actions. And the FBI and local law enforcement still do this stuff but everyone acts like they don’t.

COINTELPRO will change the way you look at media, government, and law enforcement

74BMWBavaria:
The FBI tracking Ernest Hemingway. He became paranoid that they were tracking him. Turns out they were watching him.

Well he lived in Cuba and I believe was on good terms with Castro.

NotBobNRoss replied:
He also worked as a spy for the soviets in WWII, as well as the OSS (WWII CIA for those who don't know what the OSS is).

President Nixon was so paranoid at the end of his administration that people dismissed out of hand his claim (on tape) that the Pentagon was spying on him. Turns out, they were doing exactly that.

Odd-Jupiter said:
That various governments recorded, analyzed, and stored every single piece of digital information, anyone shared with anyone else.

For you younger people, this used to be one of those tinfoil hat conspiracies.

Eligius_MS replied:
I can remember when it first started to become known there were people who would argue they didn't care because they had nothing to hide and weren't guilty. Most of the ones I still know are the most rabid about gov't going too far these days. Kinda like former smokers can be the worst anti-smoking people.

The Echelon Program.

I'm amazed this one doesn't come up more, it was treated as a real tin-foil-hat looney conspiracy theory for years, I remember it being mentioned in a couple of films in the 90s (i think by crazy conspiracy theorist type characters).
Then Snowden blew his whistle and I was amazed how many details were right.

Well, no one really knew about it until I believe the 90’s, so there would’ve been no theorizing, but in the early 60’s the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up a plan called “Operation Northwoods” in which they planned on staging and committing terror attacks across the U.S., only to turn around and blame it on Cuba in order to justify an invasion.
The proposal was thoroughly and completely rejected by JFK.

Crashgate. In a nutshell...

Fernando Alonso is starting the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix from... quite a bad position, actually. The normal strategy when in a competitive car starting at the back is to load her up with fuel, and go as far as you can into the race before pitting. Weirdly, Alonso is instead one of the first to pit. The only possible way this can work is if the Safety Car comes out due to how the rules are enforced.

Well, exactly one lap later, Alonso's teammate has a big crash into the wall, and brings out the Safety Car, allowing Alonso to go on and win. At the time, many were accusing Alonso's Renault team of fixing the result due to how convenient it was for the Safety Car to come out at exactly the right time after the other car crashed. But hey, that's just a coincidence, right?
It wasn't a coincidence. It turned out Alonso's teammate was indeed told to crash by the team principal to benefit the team by scoring a win. This all came out in 2009, after the 2nd driver lost his seat for not being quick enough.