[griffoa]

My Mother is being sucked into this whole QAnon, Covid, 5G conspiracy universe. I dont know what to do about it. She is sounding more and more unhinged every time I talk to her. I am thinking about somehow getting her IP blocked by YouTube, but I am not entirely sure about how the best way would be. Maybe I could run LOIC against YouTube from my laptop next time I visit her, but I am not sure it is enough to get one blocked.

[kennywinker]

This podcast recently had an episode about parents getting radicalized, and it had some suggestions - might be worth a listen https://castro.fm/episode/2JwRY7

[griffoa]

Thanks, I will check that.

[dreamcompiler]

Does her router have parental controls and the ability to block websites? I was under the impression that most do nowadays.

[griffoa]

Not sure. She has one of those fiber boxes with branded router provided by the operator. I should try to access it next time I visit her - it might have some sort of parental control.

[Triv888]

Probably does, but if she is renting those, you should do her a favor and replace them with something she will own and that has parental control. Or maybe change the DNS servers to one in your control (not sure if that will work with the encrypted DNS though that get pushed onto you by Firefox).

[sorokod]

If possible, maybe be take a holiday together, away from the internet?

[griffoa]

I tried to get her out and visit her family (in a different country), but she is isolating more and more. I will try to be more persistent.

[SkyMarshal]

Saw a good article on that recently, which a bunch of links to potentially useful ideas:

https://theweek.com/articles/951759/parents-warned-internet-...

It's not just your parents, it's lots of people who didn't grow up with the internet and don't fundamentally understand some of its nuances.

Excerpts:

"None of this is to suggest my generation's brains are immune to internet breaking. But there are some important distinctions here — three in my observation — that give this a generational dimension.

...

"The first (and this is based in data) is that younger generations are less likely to dose themselves daily with the poison of cable news, so that's one less source of content blasting. For those who consume cable news on a regular basis, the immersion becomes nigh impossible to break."

...

"And that brings me to the second generational distinction: the degree of innate understanding of the medium. I do not think my older family members understand the extent to which the content they encounter is tailored by algorithms to set their lizard brains on fire. Like the majority of their peers, as a 2019 survey showed, they probably don't understand an algorithm is involved at all. They insist they do understand, but their behavior tells me they do not."

...

"I thought my own parents would be safe from all this because — thank God — they are not on any of the big three social media sites; they don't have cable; and their tech skills are limited. As it turns out, that's irrelevant. The internet is so user-friendly now it can break anyone's brain! YouTube and a few political email lists are all it takes. And now that this content history is established, my mom's search results are tailored accordingly. The brokenness is self-reinforcing."

...

"[Third:] Our parents have generally not managed that pandemic-time connectivity to their [real life] friends — if indeed they had close friends in the first place. A common thread in my discussions of broken boomer brains is a lack of intimate friendships and hobbyist communities. In the absence of that emotional connection and healthy recreational time use, this media engagement can become a bad substitute. The memes become the hobby. The Facebook bickering supplants the relationships. And it's all moving so fast — tweet, video, meme, Tucker, tweet, video, meme, Maddow — the change goes unnoticed. The brain breaks."

[pcdoodle]

Don't do that. Be nice.

[griffoa]

I probably wouldn't. I am getting more concerned recently only because I got the vibe somehow from her during new year that I was somehow involved in some of that shady stuff, which those conspiracy groups claim is going on under our noses. I work in IT for a bank currently and am doing pretty well as a consultant. Somehow she cannot really "compute" that.