The images below are the first photographs of Earth from more than 100 miles in space. The U.S. military took them in 1947 using a V-2 rocket captured from the German Wehrmacht. It was one of the first times we really saw the Earth from a distance. And it was clearly round.

Less than a decade later, the Flat Earth Society convened for the first time and espoused a view of the planet that didn’t fit with the new images being sent from space and that had already been rejected by much of the scientific community for nearly half a millennia. According to the Flat Earth Society’s ideas, the Earth was a flat disk with the Arctic at its center and a towering wall of ice all along its circumference. The sun, moon, and stars, they said, were no further away than New York is from London.

They also asserted that everything NASA was showing us was an elaborate deception.

Shortly after the first men walked on the moon, the original founder of the Flat Earth Society died. A small but dedicated fanbase kept his work alive and continued the circulation of a flat Earth newsletter. Over the years, the society slowly grew and spread, eventually garnering a subscribership of around 3,500 flat-Earthers in the 1990s. But in 1997, a house fire destroyed the Flat Earth Society’s library and membership roster. Unable to collect dues, the Flat Earth Society fell into deep financial trouble. The last organizers died a short time later, and the Flat Earth Society might’ve died right along with them—if not for the internet.

In 2004, the Flat Earth Society returned as an online discussion forum. Anybody with an interest in flat Earth theories and an internet connection could post questions or start topics of conversation or share flat Earth links and resources. But most of all, they could connect with fellow flat-Earthers.

It’s in the best interest of social media networks to encourage their users to keep posting content to the platform, no matter how dubious it might be.

Coincidentally, 2004 was the same year Facebook was created. YouTube launched a year later. Then Twitter. By the time the Flat Earth Society had its own website in 2009, social media had already begun to dominate the online landscape. Internet users today spend about 22 percent of their time online on social media networks. For many, social media is the internet. From specialty cars to artisanal cooking to niche films to online sewing circles, social media offers a group for everyone. Even flat-Earthers.

Before the advent of the internet, it took 50 years for the Flat Earth Society to reach 3,500 members. Their website now gets over 300,000 unique visits every day. There are flat Earth Facebook pages with over 100,000 likes; flat Earth YouTube videos with millions of views; and an untold number of Twitter users and subreddits and discussion forums and online chat rooms—all dedicated to the dissemination of flat Earth theories.

With a potential audience of billions, social media can give somebody in their basement the same reach as a traditional television studio. Distribution is as easy as a few clicks and uploads. Social media has essentially leveled—or flattened—the media landscape, so to speak.