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Whether or not the earth is an oblate spheroid, those are still drawn/generated images. "Cartoons" seems a fair enough word. They aren't real images, and part of their intent is to create a certainty in your mind. If you understand the earth is roundish, it shouldn't be because you mistook made up images for the real deal, it should be because you understand the mathematics behind it, otherwise you're exactly the same as the side you want to make fun of.
You believe that these renderings were made with the intent to create certainty in your mind? About the fact that the earth is spherical? Do I have that right?
If that is the case, I disagree. Satellites can snap pictures all day and night but they are not far enough away to get the whole outline of the earth. It takes all these composites to get the full picture. If NASA wanted a full picture they would have to spend billions of dollars to travel 300k miles (arbitrary number used as an example) from the surface of the Earth.
Is there something sinister to using the tech that you have to make said composite? I don't think so and I don't think it is propaganda used to "create a certainty." There is no need to create a certainty. High school trigonometry is all you need to prove a spherical earth.
Your last sentence is exactly my point.
I think what we disagree on is that in my mind it doesn't matter whether the image is depicting something true or false, or what the intent is of the person who created it. It is that it isn't a "real" image, it's a created one, and it should come along with an asterisk saying as much.
Projecting a globe onto a 2D "sphere" creates all sorts of other problems as well, which is related and also annoys me endlessly. There are almost limitless ways to project a map and while they are all correct they are also all very different and can definitely be used for propaganda purposes.
I'm willing to bet that the way that people come about these composite photos is by searching on google, or elsewhere, "picture of earth from space," or something similar. When they see the composite and recognize that Africa, for example, is huge in one and small in another, their BS meter goes off. Flat earthers, rightly so, deduce that these pictures are fake. They do a little research an come to find that NASA stated that they are composites.
The problem is that they went through google image search instead of the source of the image. When a magazine, National Geographic, or Time, for example, released the original photo, they likely did have that asterisk. The caption of the photo probably said, "Composite image created by NASA [with some date]." The flat earther didn't come about the image this way though. They found it through google. They then immediately believe they are being deceived.
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