[vasuki]

I can relate to that very much. Your former friend sounds exactly like one of my friends with whom I am trying to not end friendship and be as empathetic and helpful as I can be.

> while at the same time those same sources get used easily for their own arguments

100% this!

Telegram channels and Substack seem to be super popular for this sort of propaganda. I also did a technical analysis of many of the websites shared in these channels and found:

- they use very heavy trackers

- keylogging for webpages is common

- they all use privacy shields for `whois` info

- third party cookies

You can find some of these if you want to take a look in https://github.com/Langer81/Summer-REU-Research

[cycomanic]

Good luck! It's incredibly hard, not breaking the friendship. I had to block my friend, I just could take discussions any longer. I was being insulted every time and was mentally completely exhausted. Just thinking about it already increases my heartrate.

I'm wondering about your friend. In hindsight I can see some of the behaviour also in how he was when he was young. He always had a bit of a chip on his shoulder (some of it justified being a Turkish emigrant in Germany), and always blamed bad things happening to him on outside influences never on his own behaviour. Very similar how he argues about conspiracies. Is/was that similar with your friend? I'm wondering if there is some pattern.

[JoelMcCracken]

Very interesting! I’ve wondered about doing something similar. I hope this is followed up on.