If you set up parental controls on your parent's devices I can guarantee they won't find a way around it.
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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They will, usually by accident. Source: my father in law.
You block Fox News using a Pi-hole?
He only watched Tagesschau, but no matter what we did with his phone to make it secure, he'd manage to fuck it up and get to places he shouldn't get to and change settings he shouldn't have been able to get at. His PC was also a barrel of fun.
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my grandpa with dementia installed OVER 40 solitaire apps because he would go to the app store and install one every time instead of opening the ones he "couldn't find"
now he has parental controls blocking app downloading
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My mom mentioned that my dad has been watching some concerning (in her words, "annoying") YouTube content lately. Last time she said that it was America's Got Talent, but this time it's white men arguing with cops. I visited and asked if he would show me. He jokingly said "are you gonna violate my rights?" And I very seriously said "yes. I need to make sure it's not Jordan Peterson or Joe Rogan or someone even worse". He got a little bit offended and said "you know me better than that, I'm smarter than that". But the thing is, you start by watching something innocuous like some idiot sovcit arguing with cops and the algorithm pipeline feeds you nazi shit from there and you don't even know it.
For context, my parents are the kind of leftists that don't know what leftists are. My mom calls herself a bleeding heart liberal, and my dad sees the media say things like "radical liberals" and jumps up off the couch screaming "you bet your ass im a radical liberal!" But they're left of liberal, they just don't have the language for it.
I'm not worried that my dad is gonna seek out nazi propaganda, im worried it's gonna find him anyway and I want to throw his phone in a lake.
Maybe shower thoughts wasn't the right community for me to have my existential crisis. But I wish i could block "sovcit" on my dad's phone and "trad-anything" on my mom's phone, not because I think they're dumb (okay maybe a little) but because this shit is so toxic and intrinsic and scary and my parents are so dumb.
Take care of yourself and your loved ones xx
Must be nice to have parents that haven't turned out to be fascist sociopaths.
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Any time you hear Republicans argue 18 year olds shouldn't be able to vote, and they want to increase the age to 21/25, tell them "OK - then anybody over 65 isn't allowed to vote either."
I would settle for no one can be elected if their age is younger or older than 30 and 60.
There already is a lower limit (must be 35), just need to add the upper
I'm not talking about just the president. I don't think we need anyone older than 60 deciding the future. I'm less than a decade from 60 but have been ruled by people much older than me why whole life. It isn't any better and in some ways worse than it was when I was in my twenties.
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I constantly refer to my parents and in-laws as children. Why? Because they behave exactly like my 11 year old. They have no critical reasoning skills, no emotional intelligence, are easily offended, and can not be reliability left on their own without screwing something up.
At some point around retirement age, humans seem to cognitively revert back to children and those of us in middle adulthood are left to parent our actual children and our childish parents.
Unfortunately I think that's just our parents and not all old people. My parents are the same way, but it seems to me more that maturing is a choice and active process that requires effort, and many people are unwilling to put in the work and vigilance required and it leads to the above
I don't think they're children, I think they're selfish lazy assholes, but the result that they need to be treated like children is the same
At some point around retirement age, humans seem to cognitively revert back to children
I haven’t seen that happen to everyone I know around that age. Many still have their wits about them and see the current state of affairs as a clown show. Some are even out here on the streets protesting.
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I just keep their Facebook accounts logged in on my phone. Every few months, I will go onto their profiles and unlike pages like "Wear your poppy with pride" and deradicalize their algorithm. Poppies for British boomers on Facebook are like Elsa and Spiderman on YouTube for babies.
How are poppies radical on Facebook?
Because the wearing of poppies has become synonymous with the now defunct BNP and the rest of the British right wing for a lot of us.
You can thank Stephen Yaxley-Lennon for that.
That's a bit silly. The symbol has existed as one of remembrance for over 100 years. We shouldn't let fascists take claim of it
Although I take this to mean that the 'poppy pages' are actually fronts for bigotry?
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Facebook slowly pushing more shit and you shoveling the shit away. Nicely done!
Very good idea there. I'm starting to have to keep track of my parents passwords (because they don't) and removing spam/disinformation from their Facebook/email/YouTube regularly might resolve many issues.
Like someone mentioned, shoveling the shit. Can't stopped it from getting there, but I can remove it.
Simpler still: disenfranchise senile boomers. Of course you don't target boomers specifically, any old person with very little time left to live and severe disconnect from reality shouldn't be allowed to vote on what affects the rest of the world long after they are dead.
severe disconnect from reality
Something about that doesn't sit right with me. Seeing how far the definition of an "illegal alien" is being stretched for deportation, I have a feeling people with autism, ADHD, depression, etc, would all be added to the list of people who are "disconnected from reality"
Not to mention some people are dumb enough to argue being trans is a mental illness aswell. (~~dysphoria is~~ NVM it's a diagnosis, being trans is not)
The better solution imo is to inform people about what's going on around them and how to watch out for pipelines.
They did specifically say senile in conviction with a severe disconnect from reality.
I would say many people with ADHD and milder autism have a more true perception of reality than neurotypicals, but I'm biased.
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no, WE THE PEOPLE should have global networks that simply remove that kind of brain rot and delete the people that perpetuate it.
The first step in trustable networks is securely validated identity.
On the internet nobody knows if you're a dog, a Russian Troll, or a corporate shill.
This is the one thing I hoped for out of crypto/blockchain.
You, commenter, don't need to know that I'm "Brian Brianson, a citizen living at 123 Abenue Avenue". But, it's good to know that the person commenting is a real person who has been seen and verified by someone, as a simple true/false flag. If there were good ways of verifying basic conditions of people you interact with online, without exposing personal details, then it could curb botnet opinionation as well as be useful for a lot of things.
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That's what router settings do. Sorry, X is not reachable from here.
I love this in general, unfortunately for me my dad is a retired network engineer 😫
He still shouldn't be able to circumvent a solid password. Sure, if the cell has signal, the home wifi settings won't matter, but...
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I think it would be better to make social media unprofitable with heavy regularion on data collection, trading and sharing.
Totally agree. Especially since in my country, young people are swallowing far-right propaganda at a higher rate than boomers. Canada's Tater Tots are trying to elect a MAGA candidate right now. Age is not the problem - the well of information has been poisoned.
True. I also wanted a senior mode on Apple family groups.
I can’t speak for everyone but I raised my mom right and kept her away from that trash.
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I would whole-heartedly support this.
My wife stayed at an Airbnb last week, I tried to convince her to turn the parental controls on and block OAN and Fox.
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It’s the right idea, but too narrow of a demographic. It’s not the old people that seem to be the problem. At least not only them. It’s the uneducated or intellect impaired that should be reined in. The ones that are just smart enough to use Facebook, but would struggle to understand the concept of the Dunning–Kruger effect
The amount of younger people that are sucked in hook, line, sinker, rod, boat, trailer and truck is staggering.
It’s like they decided that reality didn’t work for them, so let’s just ignore it in favour of “insert discriminatory slogan or catchphrase here”.
It’s bonkers.
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Lol, this is literally a south park episode.
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