by eskori | 2025-11-29 13:59:19+00:00
> Tell this to teenagers regularly standing on the street corner in front of my house and being loud.

I also have those, specially at night, but at least where I live they are a minority. I used to think the same but it's easy to forget about those who we don't hear about (literally).

> Yes, but again, the real danger is having your brain turned into mush by algorithms, not pEdOpHiLeS. And the current social trend is to have even more walled gardens with algorithms.

As much as I hate seeing how pedophiles are used as an excuse for absolutely horrendous technical and legal decisions (when in the first place I straight up don't believe them), I am aware that they are an actual danger. And when you are affected (also meaning your kid or whatever related) it sucks. It's a different type of harm compared to algorithms, "brainrot" and its consequences (which doesn't mean they they are less dangerous).

I completely agree in how terrible the possibility of "having our brains turned into mush by algorithms", and not only for the younger (even though they are specially vulnerable). It infuriates me even more when I see parents letting their 2yo get stuck with videos automatically recommended by some algorithm designed as if it was a mental weapon to completely lobotomize them, but then "I don't understand why do they behave like this". Also agree in the trend to have even more walled gardens with algorithms and how that sucks.

> When I was a kid parents had zero knowledge about how computer works and what the internet is, I could browse shady or straight-up illegal websites all I wanted and nobody cared. Nowadays there's huge panic "my child saw a picture of a titty!" because parents are at least somewhat aware that there's shit on the internet.

As with the first point, this is highly subjective, since different families grew and grow up in different environments (regional, cultural, legal, etc.) Where I live and with all the parents that I have discussed this topic (pretty frequent in my case), I found out that most of them understand up to some degree that the Internet has its bad stuff, but see that as inherent and inevitable, so they don't care that much. Maybe they already saw that stuff, but since they are OK they don't perceive a danger. You always find a couple of "Karens" in the other opposite, that's a worldwide species, but here a minority. I would love having actual data in how parents position with this in different areas and generations, I am really interested in this topic. Since I don't I work with that I have locally, but I know I can't just extrapolate that to the rest of the world.

> Can you point me to some statistics that fear-mongering is beneficial to the society at large? Because news usually paint a picture of the world getting more and more dangerous despite crime in general falling in most developed countries.

Unfortunately not, but the think is that I also agree here, panicking is hardly a good choice. However, that's not the same as ignoring the danger. If we are getting lower crime rates and safer environments it's because we are more aware (and take consequent actions) than ever of different types of dangers. That's my whole point: ignoring that the Internet has dangers because we happened to grow up in it and without issues isn't ok. There are dangers, we should be aware of them, and we should have mechanisms to avoid them or at least mitigate their impact (Virus? Antivirus. Pedophiles? Don't engage with certain interactions/requests, or idk, I don't have the answer to be honest). About the news... a hole other topic, but yeah, they live of sensationalism and I could argue how harmful and stupid that is for hours.