She’s almost 70, spend all day watching q-anon style of videos (but in Spanish) and every day she’s anguished about something new, last week was asking us to start digging a nuclear shelter because Russia was dropped a nuclear bomb over Ukraine. Before that she was begging us to install reinforced doors because the indigenous population were about to invade the cities and kill everyone with poisonous arrows. I have access to her YouTube account and I’m trying to unsubscribe and report the videos, but the reccomended videos keep feeding her more crazy shit.
As you plan on messing with her feed, I’d like to warn you that a sudden change in her recommendations could seem to her like the whole internet got censored and she can’t see the truth anymore. She would be cut off from a sense of community and a sense of having special inside knowledge, and that may make things worse rather than better.
My non-proffessional prediction is that she would get bored with nothing to worry about and start actively seeking out bad news to worry over.
This is exactly the response my neighbors have. “Things get censored, so that must mean that the gov must be hiding this info” It’s truly insane to see this happen
What you’re describing is a cult or psychosis. Stopping it is a good thing, not something to be worried about.
Well yeh but, the concern is unintended consequences which sounds entirely likely. It’s kind of fucked up to even be considering doing this to an adult, entirely entitled to their own choice of viewing habits, without their knowledge and by surreptitious use of their account and it’s only dubiously ethical because it’s an act of kindness against machine generated manipulation of a far more insidious nature and for far less than altruistic reasons.
You’d hardly want it to backfire after taking this step. By posing this question the OP obviously already considers the pseudo cult his Mum’s getting sucked in to be a bad thing so it doesn’t need further signalling but being sure to do it carefully with an eye on the actual effect is probably wise or the whole endeavour would be a waste and might push her further in to the waiting arms of lunatics and charlatans.
Cold turkey isn’t the best solution if you truly think that is where they’re at for exactly the reason they described. How don’t you get that?
I agree that cult mindset or psychosis is what she has going on. But suddenly removing the source from her computer without her knowledge could backfire because she’s already so invested.