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Comment by CivBase | Hacker News Reader

> It took me two seconds to write that. How much effort would it take you to debunk it?

How long would it take you to establish enough credibility to be able to make an accusation like that and have people actually take your word for it? There might be a few nutters out there who are so predisposed to hate JFK that they'll believe anything negative about him, but most people - even those who dislike him - would rightfully question such an outlandish statement made by someone with no credentials.

Dishonest people retain credibility when their supporters are trapped in echo chambers designed to keep the truth out. Censorship is a powerful tool for establishing and maintaining echo chambers. We need to fight echo chambers, not promote censorship.

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> How long would it take you to establish enough credibility to be able to make an accusation like that and have people actually take your word for it?

Keep this in mind: Q is literally some dude on 4chan/8chan with a tripcode.

> There might be a few nutters out there who are so predisposed to hate JFK that they'll believe anything negative about him, but most people - even those who dislike him - would rightfully question such an outlandish statement made by someone with no credentials.

I make no claim that my example lie is a good example of misinformation/disinformation. It was only meant to show the asymmetry of effort implicit in "more discussion."

The key thing about getting a lie to stick is to hitting the right emotional buttons with it. And it's so easy broadcast lies nowadays that you can even discover those buttons stochastically, by just throwing random lies out there and seeing what sticks.

Furthermore, if your goal is not to convince anyone of anything in particular, but to just to gum up a society (which is the goal of disinformation, properly understood), you don't event need to find particular lies with a broad appeal across society. You just need enough lies that enough people fall for one or two.

I believe it is reasonable to speculate that QAnon members are generally trapped in extreme, right-wing echo chambers. Echo chambers enable people to retain undeserved credibility.

> I believe it is reasonable to speculate that QAnon members are generally trapped in extreme, right-wing echo chambers. Echo chambers enable people to retain undeserved credibility.

That's not true, for instance:

https://www.startribune.com/conspiracy-theories-of-qanon-fin...

> Conspiracy theories of QAnon find fertile ground in an unexpected place – the yoga world

> QAnon's conspiracy theories have taken root among yogis and other adherents of natural medicine.

I'm not sure how that demonstrates QAnon members are not generally trapped in right-wing echo chambers. Are yoga practitioners exempt from right-wing echo chambers?

> I'm not sure how that demonstrates QAnon members are not generally trapped in right-wing echo chambers. Are yoga practitioners exempt from right-wing echo chambers?

I suppose a significant number of yoga teachers/influencers could be secret dittoheads, but the idea kind of beggars belief.

One of the interesting things about QAnon is that it offered on-ramps to groups outside the stereotype of people would go for such a theory (e.g. "save the children"). People in right-wing echo chambers were definitely more susceptible, but it's a mistake to be reassured by that.

Also, particular echo chambers aren't some kind of primordial entity. They start all the time and they often grow. So even if something like QAnon requires one, that just means there's one more step.

Are yoga practitioners usually liberal? Is that a thing? My perception has always been that yoga communities tend to attract those interested in "alternative medicine", a group which certainly has its own share of echo chambers. Given the apparent ideologically-insular nature of both groups, I'm not surprised that there would be overlap between the them.

Echo chambers are not a new phenomena, but they have certainly become more powerful with the rise of the internet. Never before have we been so easily able to surround ourselves with groups of like-minded individuals. But what I find even more concerning are algorithmically-driven content feeds which are tailored to suite the preferences of each individual user.

Algorithmically-driven, tailored content feeds basically automate the creation of echo chambers. It all sounds well and good to the user - after all, they get access to more of the type of content they prefer. However, those feeds almost inevitably learn to always provide the user exclusively with content that reinforces their preexisting ideas and opinions. They'll eagerly spread things like QAnon if it results in increased user engagement.

I don't think there's anything particularly special about QAnon compared to any other politically-charged conspiracy group. I think they just got lucky and once they passed a certain threshold of popularity, the algorithms did what they do best.

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