My mom mentioned that my dad has been watching some concerning (in her words, “annoying”) YouTube content lately. Last time she said that it was America’s Got Talent, but this time it’s white men arguing with cops. I visited and asked if he would show me. He jokingly said “are you gonna violate my rights?” And I very seriously said “yes. I need to make sure it’s not Jordan Peterson or Joe Rogan or someone even worse”. He got a little bit offended and said “you know me better than that, I’m smarter than that”. But the thing is, you start by watching something innocuous like some idiot sovcit arguing with cops and the algorithm pipeline feeds you nazi shit from there and you don’t even know it.
For context, my parents are the kind of leftists that don’t know what leftists are. My mom calls herself a bleeding heart liberal, and my dad sees the media say things like “radical liberals” and jumps up off the couch screaming “you bet your ass im a radical liberal!” But they’re left of liberal, they just don’t have the language for it.
I’m not worried that my dad is gonna seek out nazi propaganda, im worried it’s gonna find him anyway and I want to throw his phone in a lake.
Maybe shower thoughts wasn’t the right community for me to have my existential crisis. But I wish i could block “sovcit” on my dad’s phone and “trad-anything” on my mom’s phone, not because I think they’re dumb (okay maybe a little) but because this shit is so toxic and intrinsic and scary and my parents are so dumb.
Take care of yourself and your loved ones xx
I was interested in Diablo IV when it was released which, after a few videos, led YouTube to recommend Asmondgold. I watched one or two of his videos and the next thing I know my feed is full of maga and manosphere trash. Most of it had innocuous titles and thumbnails but a few minutes in I was being bombarded with lies, bad faith arguments, logical fallacies. Don’t even get me started with where funny Garand Thumb videos will lead. All I could think of was how Al Queda and ISIS recruited people with videos posted online.
EDIT: For the most part, I liked Asmondgold, but the algorithm leads from him to very dark places.
Imo Asmongold is good to mid, until he starts getting political, then it plummets into awful. Also yeah I think the garand thumb to far right pipeline is very real, the guy is actually quite extreme iirc.
I remember watching Grand Thumb’s video on actual grand thumb, because I had never known it was a thing (I’m not huge on guns and I like history, but not that much) and thought it was interesting. A couple years later and there’s a video of him shooting guns with a couple other guntubers out in the bush, and iirc there wasn’t anything explicitly said or stated in the video, but I just got an overwhelming vibe of “good ol’ boys shootin and drinkin and talkin trash” which rubbed me the wrong way.
Asmon is fucking disgusting human trash who wallows in his own filth, thinking it’s normal to do. Like letting rats decompose into the carpet right next to where he sleeps, or not cleaning up his vomit “because he liked the smell”
I got recommended Asmongold several years ago before he got political. Dude was dumb as hell, had nothing of value to say and kept making the most annoyingly punchable faces. He’s always been utter trash.
Same thing happened with me and Shadiversity. I like medieval stuff and fantasy so i thought he’d be interesting.
Noooope. Just another fash scumbag.
Wait shad is a fash scumbag or the algorithm leads from them to fash?
Must be nice to have parents that haven’t turned out to be fascist sociopaths.
Why do you stigmatize Joe Rogan and others? There’s nothing wrong with watching people who you diagree with.
There’s plenty wrong with credulous dipshits who give lying propagandists and conmen a platform.
Sorry guys, that also happened 40 years ago in the form of “retired guy has some free time and starts buying 2 newspapers, one of which is just political propagabda”… That’s definitely not on social media, they just amplified the phenomena
If you set up parental controls on your parent’s devices I can guarantee they won’t find a way around it.
Thats all good for kids since they dont know any better to begin with. Parents will bitch and complain they can no longer watch Fox news to enough people, and ‘the problem’ will get fixed.
my grandpa with dementia installed OVER 40 solitaire apps because he would go to the app store and install one every time instead of opening the ones he “couldn’t find”
now he has parental controls blocking app downloading
I’m glad he has you/y’all Toadski
<3
I hope you guys checked for subscriptions he may have added. Might still be paying for a dozen of those games.
They will, usually by accident. Source: my father in law.
You block Fox News using a Pi-hole?
He only watched Tagesschau, but no matter what we did with his phone to make it secure, he’d manage to fuck it up and get to places he shouldn’t get to and change settings he shouldn’t have been able to get at. His PC was also a barrel of fun.
Time for a flip phone and an Apple lIe!
I constantly refer to my parents and in-laws as children. Why? Because they behave exactly like my 11 year old. They have no critical reasoning skills, no emotional intelligence, are easily offended, and can not be reliability left on their own without screwing something up.
At some point around retirement age, humans seem to cognitively revert back to children and those of us in middle adulthood are left to parent our actual children and our childish parents.
At some point around retirement age, humans seem to cognitively revert back to children
I haven’t seen that happen to everyone I know around that age. Many still have their wits about them and see the current state of affairs as a clown show. Some are even out here on the streets protesting.
Unfortunately I think that’s just our parents and not all old people. My parents are the same way, but it seems to me more that maturing is a choice and active process that requires effort, and many people are unwilling to put in the work and vigilance required and it leads to the above
I don’t think they’re children, I think they’re selfish lazy assholes, but the result that they need to be treated like children is the same
I can’t speak for everyone but I raised my mom right and kept her away from that trash.
I recently thanked my dad for not going all crazy. He fixes up old cars and takes pictures of birds.
I’m jealous. Mine watches far-right extremist content on tiktok and youtube. What’s an affordable hobby that wouldn’t make an insecure man-child feel emasculated?
I’m so tired of this rampant paternalism across society. It’s exhausting.
How do you propose to counteract the spread of facism through the internet?
The same way we fight it in the physical world. With debate and education and engagement.
Wild that you would express concern with spreading of fascism while advocating for technocracy. You don’t oppose fascism- you just have a preferred flavor of it.
Debate, education and engagement take time.
The algorithm is instantaneously ready with the next easily digestible bit of content to send you further down the rabbit hole into radicalization.
I worry that we need a more instantaneous cure in our current information environment.
“Instantaneous cure” sounds like you’re suggesting something super fucked up.
I’m not, really. I just don’t think we have the luxury of taking the amount of time that we would need to educate people thoroughly enough to counteract the algorithm.
Probably what we need is a limitation on free speech where blatant misinformation is involved. In the same way that shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre is harmful, so is repeating false claims to stir political discord.
The eagerness to censor people, and not the companies pushing the shit, is such peak fascist bootlicking behavior.
With debate and education and engagement.
the algorithms will not show them to nearly as many consumers as it does with fascist content
Yes, we need more regulation of companies, and what they push. Not people.
This I agree with. However, I disagree with debating fascists. They don’t debate in good faith. Their aim in any debate is to wear you down by spewing more lies than you have the time or energy to debunk.
The point isn’t to convert the fascist. It’s to humiliate them and expose them in front of everyone else.
You can’t humiliate someone who has no shame. And with their firehose of falsehoods, you’ll only expose a small portion of their lies by the time they’ve already moved on. Nothing productive comes from waging a war of words with people who don’t believe in the words that come out of their own mouth.
paternalism
Whenever I see someone complaining about this on the internet, I imagine they’re an angsty teenager mad that their mom doesn’t let them get a face tattoo.
Yeah, you’re aware of the definition of paternalism then. That’s the whole point of authoritarianism. The leadership does not believe the people can trusted to run their own lives, and treats the entire population as disobedient teenagers.
That’s the whole point of authoritarianism.
Lol no. You could say paternalism is authoritarian, but not the other way around. Authoritarianism is just about power.
But as an aside, would you mind sharing your age? You don’t need to be specific, just say if you’re over or under 18. I have a… theory about people who obsess over the concept of “paternalism”.
All paternalism is authoritarian. Not all authoritarianism is paternal.
Middle aged. Your theory sounds bunk.
I think it would be better to make social media unprofitable with heavy regularion on data collection, trading and sharing.
Totally agree. Especially since in my country, young people are swallowing far-right propaganda at a higher rate than boomers. Canada’s Tater Tots are trying to elect a MAGA candidate right now. Age is not the problem - the well of information has been poisoned.
My wife stayed at an Airbnb last week, I tried to convince her to turn the parental controls on and block OAN and Fox.
What’s OAN? Never heard of that.
Farther right than Fox. Yes, it’s possible.
south park did it.
Any time you hear Republicans argue 18 year olds shouldn’t be able to vote, and they want to increase the age to 21/25, tell them “OK - then anybody over 65 isn’t allowed to vote either.”
I would settle for no one can be elected if their age is younger or older than 30 and 60.
There already is a lower limit (must be 35), just need to add the upper
I’m not talking about just the president. I don’t think we need anyone older than 60 deciding the future. I’m less than a decade from 60 but have been ruled by people much older than me my whole life. It isn’t any better and in some ways worse than it was when I was in my twenties.
Yea, I feel you. Age limits everywhere, especially the upper limit, are a good idea.
for becoming a president or for voting?
That number is specifically for the president
Same maximum retirement age for everyone. Politicians included.
If you’re old enough to draw your full Social Security payment, you’re too old to hold public office.
Sorry, Bernie. You’re one of the good ones, but you’ll have to make sacrifices for the common good.
Not being eligible doesn’t mean not doing campaigns for other people.
Social media sites thrive on the engagement that comes from those people doom scrolling so this whole premise is antithetical to the purpose of social media sites and the only reason they aren’t doing the same to children is because the law prevents them from doing so wholesale (but they will try to edge around the law every chance they get).
You know, in many EU states we have secrecy of correspondence laws. It’s illegal for third parties to read your messages without your consent. This includes parents and children
I just keep their Facebook accounts logged in on my phone. Every few months, I will go onto their profiles and unlike pages like “Wear your poppy with pride” and deradicalize their algorithm. Poppies for British boomers on Facebook are like Elsa and Spiderman on YouTube for babies.
Facebook slowly pushing more shit and you shoveling the shit away. Nicely done!
Very good idea there. I’m starting to have to keep track of my parents passwords (because they don’t) and removing spam/disinformation from their Facebook/email/YouTube regularly might resolve many issues.
Like someone mentioned, shoveling the shit. Can’t stopped it from getting there, but I can remove it.
How are poppies radical on Facebook?
Because the wearing of poppies has become synonymous with the now defunct BNP and the rest of the British right wing for a lot of us.
You can thank Stephen Yaxley-Lennon for that.
That’s a bit silly. The symbol has existed as one of remembrance for over 100 years. We shouldn’t let fascists take claim of it
Although I take this to mean that the ‘poppy pages’ are actually fronts for bigotry?
Correct.
They are where you’ll find the deeply ignorant, xenophobic, Daily Mail readers frothing at the mouth and red in the face with anger over how “forriners” are lazy criminals that come here to claim benefits for them and their 16 kids, while simultaneously stealing all the jobs and homes from “hard working British families” (read: “British benefit claimants out of work and living in grothole housing owned by a local slumlord”).
Of course it’s silly.
It’s also silly that people get upset at a bunch of Asian countries who still use the swastika. But a lot of people outside the cultures instantly think of Nazis.
We shouldn’t be getting upset at swastikas being used within their asian context.
no, WE THE PEOPLE should have global networks that simply remove that kind of brain rot and delete the people that perpetuate it.
The first step in trustable networks is securely validated identity.
On the internet nobody knows if you’re a dog, a Russian Troll, or a corporate shill.
My parents are full blown terrorists. But their so fat they can’t actually do anything about their beliefs. I’ve warned them that if a Civil War starts. They will be the first to die because medications wont be available to keep them alive and I won’t care when it happens. They voted for this and support this trash.
