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On June 12 2026 02:56 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2026 02:45 EnDeR_ wrote:On June 12 2026 02:00 dyhb wrote:
I'm happy that the vulnerability was discovered when it was just one yahoo with her dog bragging about it on social media. Much like it should be no comfort that a hacker was caught and prosecuted after a successful hack of a website, it should be no comfort that she was found through no investigation, and her dog was successfully registered, his/her vote counted in an election, and he/she continued to receive dog-mail in ballots up to the time that owner disclosed the crime on social media.
Let's fight back against conspiracy theorists recruiting others about insecure elections and illegal schemes taking advantage of them, by never noting how easy this crime was to accomplish. My big problem with this thread, or Americans in this thread, is the failure to apply common sense to how people read news stories like that. It's some kind of bubble that reads that and thinks "It's just one woman, so not worth my time." The common sense approach is to tackle the spread of conspiracy theories at the source. You gonna get the president banned off social media again, or something? Declare a national emergency related to the spread of conspiracy theories and suspend civil rights? I don’t think the tools you have at your disposal on this are that powerful.
As approaches go to reduce the spread of conspiracy theories, I would classify these about as effective as making California count their votes a little faster.
We are certainly due some serious legislating around social media use, currently the top spreading vector for conspiracy theories.
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On June 12 2026 02:00 hitthat wrote:
Your president completely lost the plot with that comment about taking control of iranian oil. I feel ashamed just by reading this and i'm not even American.
I've never been more deeply ashamed of my country and my countrymen as I've been these past few years. "One day, everyone will have always been against this" is little consolation.
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On June 12 2026 04:02 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2026 02:56 dyhb wrote:On June 12 2026 02:45 EnDeR_ wrote:On June 12 2026 02:00 dyhb wrote:
I'm happy that the vulnerability was discovered when it was just one yahoo with her dog bragging about it on social media. Much like it should be no comfort that a hacker was caught and prosecuted after a successful hack of a website, it should be no comfort that she was found through no investigation, and her dog was successfully registered, his/her vote counted in an election, and he/she continued to receive dog-mail in ballots up to the time that owner disclosed the crime on social media.
Let's fight back against conspiracy theorists recruiting others about insecure elections and illegal schemes taking advantage of them, by never noting how easy this crime was to accomplish. My big problem with this thread, or Americans in this thread, is the failure to apply common sense to how people read news stories like that. It's some kind of bubble that reads that and thinks "It's just one woman, so not worth my time." The common sense approach is to tackle the spread of conspiracy theories at the source. You gonna get the president banned off social media again, or something? Declare a national emergency related to the spread of conspiracy theories and suspend civil rights? I don’t think the tools you have at your disposal on this are that powerful. Trump wasn't banned simply for spreading conspiracy theories though. He was banned after he tried to seize power for himself. And yeah, I think if president is trying to forcibly take control of the Republic with his supporters, I think limiting his ability to coordinate and foment insurrection is a reasonable response. Isn't that one of the first targets in a successful coup d'etat? Seize the means of communications? To protect against it, the same would apply. In the context of anybody that says "tackle the spread of conspiracy theories at the source," I'd like to know what that means. It's a little tough in a free society with very limited speech restrictions to talk of attacking the source. That's one of the reasons why I'm talking about limiting the spread via other means.
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On June 12 2026 04:25 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2026 02:56 dyhb wrote:On June 12 2026 02:45 EnDeR_ wrote:On June 12 2026 02:00 dyhb wrote:
I'm happy that the vulnerability was discovered when it was just one yahoo with her dog bragging about it on social media. Much like it should be no comfort that a hacker was caught and prosecuted after a successful hack of a website, it should be no comfort that she was found through no investigation, and her dog was successfully registered, his/her vote counted in an election, and he/she continued to receive dog-mail in ballots up to the time that owner disclosed the crime on social media.
Let's fight back against conspiracy theorists recruiting others about insecure elections and illegal schemes taking advantage of them, by never noting how easy this crime was to accomplish. My big problem with this thread, or Americans in this thread, is the failure to apply common sense to how people read news stories like that. It's some kind of bubble that reads that and thinks "It's just one woman, so not worth my time." The common sense approach is to tackle the spread of conspiracy theories at the source. You gonna get the president banned off social media again, or something? Declare a national emergency related to the spread of conspiracy theories and suspend civil rights? I don’t think the tools you have at your disposal on this are that powerful. + Show Spoiler +
As approaches go to reduce the spread of conspiracy theories, I would classify these about as effective as making California count their votes a little faster.
We are certainly due some serious legislating around social media use, currently the top spreading vector for conspiracy theories.
I suppose if everyone that wants that just hops on the Hamster Wheel + Show Spoiler +1. There's a problem
2. Politicians won't fix it
3. Need to replace the politicians with ones that will
4. Can't replace the politicians because of how the system works
5. Need to fix the system
6. Politicians won't fix it (because it benefits them)
7. Repeat ad nauseam.
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On June 12 2026 04:02 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2026 02:56 dyhb wrote:On June 12 2026 02:45 EnDeR_ wrote:On June 12 2026 02:00 dyhb wrote:
I'm happy that the vulnerability was discovered when it was just one yahoo with her dog bragging about it on social media. Much like it should be no comfort that a hacker was caught and prosecuted after a successful hack of a website, it should be no comfort that she was found through no investigation, and her dog was successfully registered, his/her vote counted in an election, and he/she continued to receive dog-mail in ballots up to the time that owner disclosed the crime on social media.
Let's fight back against conspiracy theorists recruiting others about insecure elections and illegal schemes taking advantage of them, by never noting how easy this crime was to accomplish. My big problem with this thread, or Americans in this thread, is the failure to apply common sense to how people read news stories like that. It's some kind of bubble that reads that and thinks "It's just one woman, so not worth my time." The common sense approach is to tackle the spread of conspiracy theories at the source. You gonna get the president banned off social media again, or something? Declare a national emergency related to the spread of conspiracy theories and suspend civil rights? I don’t think the tools you have at your disposal on this are that powerful. Trump wasn't banned simply for spreading conspiracy theories though. He was banned after he tried to seize power for himself. And yeah, I think if president is trying to forcibly take control of the Republic with his supporters, I think limiting his ability to coordinate and foment insurrection is a reasonable response. Isn't that one of the first targets in a successful coup d'etat? Seize the means of communications? To protect against it, the same would apply.
Trump gives the impression of someone who'd main pudge in dota. It's his M.O.
Exploiting asymmetric information flows definitely seems one of the to-go toolkits that spawned out of social media.
Dismantling NATO seems more like a demand from Russia than an idea of his.
To control the oil in Iran he still needs to occupy it, like the means of communication here (it might be the better alternative tbh).
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United States44387 Posts
On June 12 2026 04:26 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2026 02:00 hitthat wrote:
Your president completely lost the plot with that comment about taking control of iranian oil. I feel ashamed just by reading this and i'm not even American. I've never been more deeply ashamed of my country and my countrymen as I've been these past few years. "One day, everyone will have always been against this" is little consolation.
If it's any consolation by the time you posted this he'd already backed down and said there was no need to seize the oil because the deal was agreed.
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On June 12 2026 05:18 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2026 04:26 LightSpectra wrote:On June 12 2026 02:00 hitthat wrote:
Your president completely lost the plot with that comment about taking control of iranian oil. I feel ashamed just by reading this and i'm not even American. I've never been more deeply ashamed of my country and my countrymen as I've been these past few years. "One day, everyone will have always been against this" is little consolation. If it's any consolation by the time you posted this he'd already backed down and said there was no need to seize the oil because the deal was agreed.
Iran doesn’t sound as sure, and Israel was surprised. So it looks like we will be at time 54 where trump is wrong. But who knows maybe this will finally be the time he’s right and they sign a deal way worse for the us than the one they tore up.
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Northern Ireland27464 Posts
On June 12 2026 04:36 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2026 04:02 Falling wrote:On June 12 2026 02:56 dyhb wrote:On June 12 2026 02:45 EnDeR_ wrote:On June 12 2026 02:00 dyhb wrote:
I'm happy that the vulnerability was discovered when it was just one yahoo with her dog bragging about it on social media. Much like it should be no comfort that a hacker was caught and prosecuted after a successful hack of a website, it should be no comfort that she was found through no investigation, and her dog was successfully registered, his/her vote counted in an election, and he/she continued to receive dog-mail in ballots up to the time that owner disclosed the crime on social media.
Let's fight back against conspiracy theorists recruiting others about insecure elections and illegal schemes taking advantage of them, by never noting how easy this crime was to accomplish. My big problem with this thread, or Americans in this thread, is the failure to apply common sense to how people read news stories like that. It's some kind of bubble that reads that and thinks "It's just one woman, so not worth my time." The common sense approach is to tackle the spread of conspiracy theories at the source. You gonna get the president banned off social media again, or something? Declare a national emergency related to the spread of conspiracy theories and suspend civil rights? I don’t think the tools you have at your disposal on this are that powerful. Trump wasn't banned simply for spreading conspiracy theories though. He was banned after he tried to seize power for himself. And yeah, I think if president is trying to forcibly take control of the Republic with his supporters, I think limiting his ability to coordinate and foment insurrection is a reasonable response. Isn't that one of the first targets in a successful coup d'etat? Seize the means of communications? To protect against it, the same would apply. In the context of anybody that says "tackle the spread of conspiracy theories at the source," I'd like to know what that means. It's a little tough in a free society with very limited speech restrictions to talk of attacking the source. That's one of the reasons why I'm talking about limiting the spread via other means.
It’s tough indeed.
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Censorship is warranted in some cases. Usually when a piece of information exposes someone to danger.
As for information created by a manipulating party, that largely depends on the stake they have in supporting their narrative.
No one's forcing you to listen to Icke's theories. But someone supporting him (or the contrary) might use several channels to still let you know about him.
The problem isn't always in the source or destination, sometimes it's the unregulated medium.
Or the regulatory authority having a conflict of interest.
It seems trivial until it isn't.
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At this point I'd not even argue for censoring harmful content, but it doesn't have to be first result on people's feeds either. Like, we could force social media companies to tune their algorithms away from addictive maximum engagement. I don't know how this would look like but maybe legislate that if someone is doomscrolling, that all the content they see is about neighbours coming together in wholesome ways or educational content.
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I would like to read a bill that legislators carefully craft that puts in legally-enforceable concrete language both "if someone is doomscrolling" and "neighbors coming together in wholesome ways" and "educational content." I'd want them to have a training wheel assignment like forcing newspapers and online zines to spend a full two days each year only publishing uplifting and good news.
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Northern Ireland27464 Posts
On June 12 2026 06:26 Vivax wrote:
Censorship is warranted in some cases. Usually when a piece of information exposes someone to danger.
As for information created by a manipulating party, that largely depends on the stake they have in supporting their narrative.
No one's forcing you to listen to Icke's theories. But someone supporting him (or the contrary) might use several channels to still let you know about him.
The problem isn't always in the source or destination, sometimes it's the unregulated medium.
Or the regulatory authority having a conflict of interest.
It seems trivial until it isn't.
A lot, and I believe a lot is indeed the medium.
I actively used to troll my secondary (high school) teacher by finding a way to insert some kind of David Icke theory into every single essay I wrote.
He’d be what I’d consider ‘old school conspiracy’, generally considered a crank, no real sociopolitical influence, hey the crazy stuff might be fun to ponder!
Moon landings same deal there really. Or flat Earth
Or the grandaddy, JFK theories. Everyone and their dog has one of those! But it’s more fun speculation, it’s not like (most) people make what they think happened to JFK a real defining facet of their identities or them to hate others who don’t share said opinion.
Such things intersected with society, but were largely gated off, a curiosity. By want of a crude analogy, I can go check out the conspiracies living in the zoo, but they largely remained in their enclosures most of the time.
Today not only have the cages been opened, but there’s a whole cottage industry that actively tries to tempt them with food into various neighbourhoods
Could have also went with zombies breaking loose and infecting more and more people, maybe more apt.
My contention is that the environmental conditions, the kind of informational space most inhabit has changed absolutely massively in say, the last 20 years give or take. Something many haven’t adapted to in some organic sense, but also something consciously driven to be generally quite detrimental to societal cohesion by various actors.
I’m not a massive fan of censorship to say the least, both ideologically, but also pragmatically. To continue with my (awful) analogy you’re not really going to accomplish much by say, caging David Icke or Alex Jones or whoever when the streets are full of zoo animals/zombies doing their thing
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On June 12 2026 14:01 EnDeR_ wrote:
At this point I'd not even argue for censoring harmful content, but it doesn't have to be first result on people's feeds either. Like, we could force social media companies to tune their algorithms away from addictive maximum engagement. I don't know how this would look like but maybe legislate that if someone is doomscrolling, that all the content they see is about neighbours coming together in wholesome ways or educational content.
Just ban social media algorithms altogether. You see the content you subscribe to in chronological order of newest content, period. No "suggested" garbage from Andrew Tate or propaganda accounts showing up on your feed.
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On June 12 2026 21:41 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2026 14:01 EnDeR_ wrote:
At this point I'd not even argue for censoring harmful content, but it doesn't have to be first result on people's feeds either. Like, we could force social media companies to tune their algorithms away from addictive maximum engagement. I don't know how this would look like but maybe legislate that if someone is doomscrolling, that all the content they see is about neighbours coming together in wholesome ways or educational content. Just ban social media algorithms altogether. You see the content you subscribe to in chronological order of newest content, period. No "suggested" garbage from Andrew Tate or propaganda accounts showing up on your feed. Yes. but no.
Because now discoverability is essentially 0. Everyone without a big existing following will essentially never got any, because the only way to see someones content is to already know about them.
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There can be a way to browse content you don't subscribe to, it can even filter out accounts that already have a certain amount of subscribers/views. I just don't trust social media corporations to "suggest" content to you, since inevitably those feeds (on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, Reddit at least) get populated with extremism, propaganda, bots, and otherwise unhealthy ragebait.
In other words, there are a lot of potential ways to organize social media to prioritize creators who aren't already popular, but the most crucial part of it is that the social media network itself can't be allowed to pick and choose which content is prioritized/suggested.
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The latest story about Europe to hit MAGA is the riots in northern Ireland. And while that situation is also fucked it's hilarious to read all the "Irish lead the way!" posts and see Foxnews talk about how they just want to be irish and it's even funnier when objections just get straight up ignored.
Peak MAGA behavior to not know anything about the people you get told to care about.
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On June 13 2026 00:17 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:
The latest story about Europe to hit MAGA is the riots in northern Ireland. And while that situation is also fucked it's hilarious to read all the "Irish lead the way!" posts and see Foxnews talk about how they just want to be irish and it's even funnier when objections just get straight up ignored.
Peak MAGA behavior to not know anything about the people you get told to care about. considering a not insignificant amount of those posters aren't American to begin with it makes perfect sense.
Their entire purpose is to farm engagement and clicks from some 2nd/3e world country. They will post and comment on whatever gets them that engagement.
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It‘s odd to read about racially motivated riots in Ireland either way but I‘m not too familiar with their thinking.
Thought they‘d find something better to direct their anger at, probably. Was there a particular trigger ?
Overall I still like the idea of regulated immigration after seeing some examples of what it does unregulated. But is it such a big issue in Ireland ?
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On June 13 2026 00:53 Vivax wrote:
Thought they‘d find something better to direct their anger at, probably. Was there a particular trigger ?
Stabbing attack allegedly committed by a Sudanese man the previous evening. So the rioters went and burnt down a bunch of Ukrainian, Romani, etc. houses. Wired reported that some Neo-Nazis were involved in stoking the violence (and not just Musk/Robinson).
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On June 13 2026 00:53 Vivax wrote:
It‘s odd to read about racially motivated riots in Ireland either way but I‘m not too familiar with their thinking.
Thought they‘d find something better to direct their anger at, probably. Was there a particular trigger ?
Overall I still like the idea of regulated immigration after seeing some examples of what it does unregulated. But is it such a big issue in Ireland ?
The people rioting would stab you for suggesting this happened in Ireland. 
But Sudanese man attacks white man with knife cutting him badly.
Rioters start burning down the houses of people with non-white skin colour.
From the very limited information at this point I'm willing to bet reasons for the attack had little to do with race or religion.
Also obviously the immigration problem is not that big in this part of the UK. You don't go into a neighbourhood and burn down houses in a real problem area. I saw the kids doing this and if they tried it in Sweden, France or most other countries they would be dead.
It has to be majority white places with a sprinkle of mostly nonviolent others. A majority arab area or asian area would figth back.
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EPT
