> People that don't understand tech should not be on the internet.

Your elitist, anti-inclusive rhetoric is unnecessary.

> They don't understand the concept of people can and will lie freeley behind a camera or keyboard.

If one of the main claims is "the media lies" then obviously they understand that.

There are valid criticisms but these are not them.

Having the ability to properly operate any machine is not 'elitist'. Computers and the internet were not made for the purposes they are used as now - and therefore they are heavily exploitable for others profit. People that don't understand how it works are significantly more suspectible to apply real world principles in ways that are entirely non applicable.

The average person trusts what others say and does not have a basic understanding of what constitutes facts and evidence. Therefore they cannot navigate truth through the internet.

The problem with social media users (and propagandas victims in general) has nothing to do with how computers work and everything to do with how people work.

>For example when that at&t network center was bombed there was a fake image going around that it "wasn't the van that exploded".

The same thing was plastered all over Twitter and Facebook... your argument doesn't hold water.

Facebook and Twitter don't go out of their way to support conspiracies and are not marketed specifically towards those that consume it.

Fact is people whom want to believe these things heavily gravitated to Parlor and call Facebook and Twitter bad/evil.

Facebook and Twitter are evil.

You're saying that one side's lies are worse than the other side's lies. There is at least as much misinformation on Facebook and Twitter as there was on Parler. What you're really complaining about is that Parler doesn't censor the people you want to see censored.

> People that don't understand tech should not be on the internet.

Do you understand the physics and engineering of all the tech you use?

There's obviously a difference between the broad understanding OP is talking about, and the low-level physics that goes into a computer.

Also, one could say that there's a stark difference between saying people who do not understand how misinformation works on a platform should not use that platform, and for example saying people who don't understand toasters shouldn't use toasters.

For the record, I don't understand the low level physics of toasters. As far as I know, they're magic bagel browning devices.

A toaster has fairly benign failure modes, so this strawman isn't really a reasonable one. Though I hope you understand toasters enough not to trigger your smoke alarm every time.

This is exactly equivalent to when people thought Reddit was something novel when they mobbed and doxed various people in their vigilante internet sleuthing of the boston marathon bomber. It's mobs being mobs: always has and always will be.

People who write 'the concept of people can and will lie freeley behind a camera or keyboard', 'it's users', and 'Parlor' should perhaps pause before accusing others of ignorance in some field.

>People that don't understand tech should not be on the internet. They don't understand the concept of people can and will lie freeley behind a camera or keyboard.

You're under the mistaken impression that people who "understand tech" are never taken in by these conspiracy theories but I've seen plenty of comments on HN supporting QAnon, "stop the steal", pizzagate, COVID conspiracies and anti-vax, scientific racism, anti-semitism, UFO woo and the paranormal, you name it someone on Hacker News believes it.

The evidence that being able to use a computer and being able to think critically or even maintain a rational grasp on the nature of reality are orthogonal skillsets is all around you.

>People that don't understand tech should not be on the internet. They don't understand the concept of people can and will lie freely behind a camera or keyboard.

This is a silly statement. Do you (whoever first said this) think widespread misinformation started with the internet? It has nothing to do with tech and everything to do with people.

People who don't understand people should not be on the internet. Their knowledge of tech is completely orthogonal.

Everything is a gradient - not absolutes. You also have to understand that, again, this is the internet and HN does have political bots.