It looks like there is ample evidence to the contrary. The fact that it doesn't work on you is great but the number of cults out there that have successfully managed to co-opt large numbers of otherwise pretty intelligent people (and let's not get started on religion) and that have managed to get these people to act against their self interest, to harm people they loved and to do things they would never ever do under normal circumstances is proof positive that brainwashing does in fact work.
To say that they 'change their own minds' is victim blaming of the very worst sort.
Groups and pressure from groups on an individual are extremely effective means to get people to conform. The need to belong is extremely strong and a very powerful button to press and all kinds of groups have abused this and other psychological levers to gain power over others.
So yes, online subcultures which consist of large number of individuals are able to influence other individuals. They have a collective memory and they act as emergent structures that have a lot more power than each individual.
Your personal experience is - unfortunately - not a very good guide for this.
If people do things mostly because they want to do them is victim blaming where is individual responsibility for anything? We are all enmeshed in society and systems of social control (but I repeat myself).
Groups and pressure from groups on people to belong may be extremely strong but the overwhelming majority of people belong only to the most anodyne inoffensive subcultures, thoroughly accepted by the host society, whether they be a religion, political persuasion, musical taste or athletic subculture. People dip their toe into a subculture and if they like it they either start paddling or jump right in. Most of them try multiple subcultures and eventually settle on a small number to continue in or none.
Online subcultures are no more, and probably less, able to influence other individuals than offline ones. They’re just more attractive because you can find the one that’s just right for you. People move to be around others like them, gay men and lesbians to Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, New York, hippies to San Francisco in the 60’s, people into dance music to Detroit or Chicago, rationalists to Berkeley and the Bay. The only way emergent structures and collective memory can have _control_ over free people is through their free choice.
My personal experience is as excellent a guide as yours. I do not see successful brain washing. I see subcultures, some deeply unhealthy, attracting people who find them congenial.
Here’s a literature review on brain washing and how it doesn’t work.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TiG8cLkBRW4QgsfrR/notes-on-b...
So all of this is about belonging and how to get someone to move from one camp to another.
Scientology and all the other cults out there have to live by the same sword that they die by: influence. And the fact that there are online support groups for some of these cults is a powerful anti-dote.
Some groups are simply more effective at isolating their followers from people who really have their best interest at heart.
I'll do you the courtesy of continuing the conversation on your terms, you want to call this brainwashing and if that's it then it works. If you want brain washing to refer to the CIA being able to program people then that indeed does not work. It requires constant upkeep and maintenance as well as the will of the victim to belong to some group to begin with. But once that condition is met the victims can be made to do a lot of stuff they would not otherwise do.
If you have not seen firsthand how cults can take otherwise normally functioning people and drive a wedge between them and their loved ones to see their lives taken over then I don't think your - or Gwern's - faulty conclusions count for much. It's bad enough that this happens, it is much worse to see people deny it because that essentially leaves the victims of cults without any support at all, which effectively enables the cults.
For many people - including many people who are simply religious - fear of being thrown out of the in-group is sufficient to get them to act against their own self-interest.
Quite a few religions have this practice and members have been known to kill themselves for the simple reason of being thrown out of the group they've been a part of for all of their lives simply because they are who they are. To see you dismiss this so callously because of a link to a narrowly researched article that has a conclusion that skips a few thousand years of evidence to the contrary seems a bit of a short-cut.
Take for instance Catholicism and the fear of excommunication, a powerful form of peer pressure where the people thrown out of the group are shunned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication
here is another interesting view on the original subject, eating disorders and the kind of pressure they flourish under:
http://nedic.ca/eating-disorders-and-depression-story-surviv...
Not to mention the kind of pressure your typical ballet dancer is under (or fashion models for that matter).
None of these rate a mention in your finely researched link, and that is the sort of thing I was getting at before you moved the goalposts.
Isolating people from their friends and family is a tried and true method of cults (including mainstream religions) the world over. It usually starts with attacking the identity of the person and driving a wedge between them and their families or friends. Can't have that kind of interference if you're going to get away with the next stage.
That's a very practical approach. For an encore, of course it helps to start with targeting people who are already in a fairly weak position socially.
For more examples of how strangers get into your head and make you do stuff you don't actually have a self-interest in see advertising, aka applied psychology. Attack the persons self-image and presto, you can sell beauty and fashion products much more easily. Buy our shitty product and you too can be loved.
Of course in basis everybody has agency and you could if you are really strongly opinionated resist all of this. But even for the most die-hard resisters the fact is that all of this works, and works ridiculously well. The best way to stay on the right side of the line is to avoid exposure and that is getting harder and harder.
Yes, it does. What else could possibly show it doesn't work better than the fact that it doesn't work?
People who are isolated, bullied, low self-esteem, shut-ins, suffering mental illnesses, or a host of other factors can and do fall into echo chambers of radicalization and extremism. You see the results in the news every day. Of course forms of it exist, like what happened to op's daughter.
People aren’t brain washed. They make choices, sometimes shitty self destructive choices, occasionally deluded ones. But they are making choices.
Online subcultures can’t target people because online subcultures don’t have memories, minds or goals. They are distributed patterns of behaviour, beliefs and norms, which attract people or not based more on the people than the subculture.
Brainwashing doesn’t work. The cult panic was bull. You can’t change people’s minds outside of a totalitarian society. They change their own minds.