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Comment by rgovostes | Hacker News Reader

I know an older couple, good people who are the kindest, most thoughtful neighbors one could ask for. I've been called over to help with various technical issues, and when I see their YouTube recommendations my heart sinks.

The entire feed is conspiracy theory videos which have led them to believe some really awful things. Virtually any tragedy in the news has some conspiratorial take; the victims are actors, it was a false flag operation, the school doesn't exist. Over time the viewer builds up the impression that every news story is meant to deceive them, and then completely loses their ability to judge truthfulness or apply skepticism.

I've even heard them talk about leaving their idyllic home because of misplaced fears. For the rest of their lives they will believe the awful lies that YouTube has served them.

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> The entire feed is conspiracy theory videos which have led them to believe some really awful things.

> the victims are actors, it was a false flag operation

You don't know what led them to believe what. And false flag operations are common, so is staging photos, videos for war propaganda. Those are not conspiracy theories, but our terrifying reality. Truth doesn't exist in wars.

One big problem with your story though, just like with every story on this Mozilla page, is that it's impossible to verify. And when it's impossible to verify things are often made up. Furthermore, emotional propaganda of such stories is pushing people to take some rumors, change them and claim them as their own, creating this "me too" movement of fake stories.

Another problem, is that the stories are so poor, that there is no perspective, baseline or any room to make any conclusions of supposed negative effects on people. Just fallacies. Do some strange things get recommended to some people? Of course they do. Do they even have enough reach to even theoretically be able to affect people? Certainly not nearly as much as a family friendly content of a girl living in a van with a snake.

Are you suggesting that these stories of my friends’ and others’ corruption through conspiracy videos are themselves part of a conspiracy? I don’t even know what to say to that.

So they became skeptical about the content they see on TV, but not on YT? How can you be sure about that? Maybe they became more skeptic in general?

Also, how can one blame YT or any media for providing/proposing content that changes one's views? Arbitrarily blocking content that present a different view on events discussed in mainstream media would seriously threaten democracy.

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