This is why the crazy is deep on the right..and it is insanity

[Peacetrain]

Now I do not understand the full mechanics of the Facebook algorithm but.. you are on Facebook, you follow a link on something you might be interested in. say guns.. and Facebook starts sending all these sites in your newsfeed, and if you follow one down a rabbit hole.. you keep getting crazier and crazier sites.. and you get hooked into dark webs and conspiracy theories.. and the crazier the theory the easier it is to believe because all these other people (and bots from say Russia) are feeding you lies.. and it is settling into the deepest recesses of you psyche, and taking up residence...

A persons very personality can be completely altered. The person you know for years and have not seen since last Thanksgiving, may be a empty shell of a human being after they are finished with them..

[CincyDem]

1. IIRC, FB did some experiment a few years ago modifying the newsfeed to alter personality.

I don't recall the exact outcome but I think they had to shut it down cuz it was making people crazy.

So yeah, at some point FB's claims that "they didn't know they could alter psychology" are going to sound like "we never knew cigarettes caused cancer" or "we never knew fossil fuels contributed to global climate change".

[Peacetrain]

2. True That!!

[SamKnause]

3. Apparently they have no critical thinking skills.

They are members of a cult, an EVIL cult.

[CrispyQ]

4. If you haven't seen it happen to someone you know, it's kind of hard to believe.

I saw it happen years ago, before FB, to my mother who got a job where they listened to Rush Limbaugh everyday. In 18 months she was a different person. She'd had a run of bad luck & made a bad decision & I think Limbaugh's message of blaming the Blacks or Gay or whoever the minority of the day was, appealed to her, more than reflecting what she could have done differently. And just recently, the past two years, my BIL has gone down the same rabbit hole, reading rw hate sites & watching OANN. Some of the shit he believes is mind boggling. You can't reach them with facts.

[Midnight Writer]

9. Yep, first time I saw this was with the Limbaugh radio show. Sane people started quoting him.

Any conversation touching on politics quickly went to "Well, Rush says..."

[magicarpet]

5. Especially the vulnerable,... those poor souls with their heads screwed on backwards.

.. social media needs government control and intervention. Or Fascism becomes rampant in our society,... we are well headed in that very same direction, much to our chagrin and detriment.

There are those who wish to put Democracy on the back burner,.. or take that pot entirely off the stove. Then put Fascism on the front and rear burners and turn it up hyper high.

Burn baby burn.... ever seen a pressure cooker explode ?

[torius]

6. There's a great podcast called Rabbit Hole

by the New York Times about this. It’s just six episodes and shows how people get sucked into these algorithms (mostly YouTube) and end up with altered minds. It talks about Q, Stefan Molyneux (a white Supremacist YouTuber), and more. This is rampant and scary.
Link to podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rabbit-hole/id1507423923

[moof]

7. The Social Dilemma on Netflix explain a lot

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=14335688

[d_r]

8. now that facebook

started deleting things that were lies, they are all going to parler so they can find the lies again.