I actually also think it’s probably both, to a degree, that’s just not what the author of the article is arguing. I think there’s probably a certain amount of persuasion that is pulling people deeper into a belief system that they might only be partially invested in at first, and then they are sucked into ecosystems that reinforce those beliefs and pull them further in. I don’t have anything but vibes and lots of half-remembered reading about online radicalization, though.

You’re right, but I think they are using the term “brainwashing” in a colloquial sense. There’s a perception that misinformation on the internet is persuading people into more extreme views, but what the author of this article is arguing is that what is happening more is that online misinformation is allowing people to easily justify beliefs that they have already formed, and quickly and easily get rid of cognitive dissonance associated with encountering information that contradicts their beliefs. This is something that people have always done, but it’s become so easy on the modern internet that more and more people are embracing fringe worldviews who might previously have been unable to cognitively support those views.

It’s a small difference in the way we think about misinformation online, but I think it’s important that we understand what is likely happening. It’s not so much that misinformation is changing people’s beliefs, but that it’s allowing people to hang onto beliefs that contradict reality more easily.

So I’m not an expert in nuclear weaponry. However, more modern warheads don’t somehow magically vaporize everything within a certain radius and then not cause effects outside that radius - that’s not how things work. They may have a larger fireball, which is the area within which things (and people) are going to be vaporized, but they still have very large areas where people will receive burns decreasing in severity depending on distance, and (if the warhead is detonated at ground level) radiation doses that will kill within 5 days to 1 month. Check out Nukemap to see those areas in different scenarios. Here’s one that I did for a ground burst of a 800 kt Topol warhead. You can see that the areas for radiation are larger than the fireball itself, and the areas for 2nd and 3rd degree burns are quite large. Setting one of these off anywhere populated would cause an immense amount of human suffering even if the folks in the ~220m fireball never saw it coming.

I dunno, I’ve read some downright horrific accounts from Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Sure, if you’re right at the hypocenter you’re immediately dead, but lots of folks didn’t die right away, but were horribly burned or got lethal doses of radiation and died slowly and horribly.

Go touch grass.

There’s no need for this, seriously. I get that it’s a gaming community but we’re trying to be better than the usual toxic mess, right?

I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re not intending to make this assertion, but as a warning: transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny are not nice, and are not tolerated on Beehaw.

I’ve wondered before if my perception of headlights being so much brighter was them really getting brighter, cars getting taller, my eyes getting older, or a combination of all those (and other) factors. It seems like there might be a few things going on, but it does definitely look like lights are getting a lot brighter, and I’m obviously not the only one to be frustrated by it…

It was very early on, the first week or so after it released. I’m sure they’ve fixed a lot of the bugs but honestly I just haven’t really been motivated to try it out again.

I tried to play London and it crashed constantly. Now, that’s not all that different an experience from playing any Bethesda game, but it did kind of kill any interest I had in the mod.

For what it’s worth, I appreciate this. I’m not in the right headspace for the usual circular firing squad right now.

Hey @UngodlyAudrey@beehaw.org, I know we don’t really know each other and I’m just a random dude on the internet but I’m shattered for you and other folks like you that are rightly scared by this outcome. I’m raising kids in this nightmare and I’m terrified of what they’re going to face growing up. I don’t know what to do either. I know this is all empty words but it’s what I’ve got right now.

Yeah Firefox on Android is extremely so for me at times. I’ve never noticed it specifically being on the first page load after a while, but I haven’t been paying that much attention. I use firefox on mobile so that I can install ublock, because when I’ve tried to use a DNS-based solution in the pass I ran into all kinds of issues with battery drain, but the experience does leave a little to be desired at times.

I saw this headline and expected something very different than what I got, and I’m really glad. I think the last decade has made me really cynical about technology and the internet, for some good reasons, to the point where a story like this is almost surprising. I found myself a little caught off guard by how emotional I got while reading it. Thank you for posting this.

This post isn’t really on-topic for c/technology. Please post it in c/Politics instead.

Just jumping in here to remind folks to Be Nice. We’ve had to clean up some comments in here already and if issues continue the thread will be locked.

This source was founded and is fully funded by the Heritage Foundation, and this article comes from the staff of the far-right Daily Caller. This is not a reliable source and anything coming from them should be taken with an entire salt mine.

I suspect their argument would be that they are more like a flea market. If you buy something fake or faulty at a flea market then the flea market probably isn’t liable, the seller is. Now, I don’t think this argument holds water, especially in light of Amazon’s practice of combining all of the stock of a single product into one place, regardless of who the seller is, so that there’s no way to know if you’ll actually get product from that seller.

I don’t think you’re trying to be xenophobic with this joke, but I feel like you should know that it’s probably not landing the way you want it to…

Reports should work even if you’re registered on another Lemmy instance, but they might be broken if you’re browsing from Kbin. Kbin’s federation is a hot mess and we’ve had a lot of issues with it.

I don’t have a problem with this thread. I was already aware of it, I’m aware it’s borderline editorializing, but honestly I think it’s funny and I’m not going to be a stickler when it isn’t harming anyone or making the community worse off. I’m more concerned with editorialized headlines if/when they are misleading or don’t reflect the actual contents of the article. If this starts to be a trend, we’ll address it, but as a one off it’s not a big deal.