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114 points

Dear conspiracy theorists

Sorry i called you crack pots. Please pass the foil

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109 points
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I find that a large number of conspiracy theories are asking the right questions, just not providing the right answers. Does big tech want to control our minds with 5G towers and microchips hidden in covid vaccines? Probably not. Does big tech want to control our minds with social media and invasive advertising? Absolutely. Is the world controlled by a secret society of lizard people? Probably not. Is the world controlled by a not-so-secret society of billionaires and politicians? To a large extent. Even those awful racist or bigoted conspiracy theories start to sound somewhat palpable palatable if you filter out the racist or bigoted part. Do Jews make life for the rest of us miserable by controlling the economy? No. But replace “Jews” with “the owning class”, and suddenly it kind of makes sense.

EDIT: Is the government putting chemicals in the water that turn frogs gay? No. Are corporations putting chemicals in water bottles that turn frogs into hermaphrodites? Literally yes

EDIT PART TWO - ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: Palatable, not palpable. Words are hard.

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22 points

As someone who has worked in IT communications, nobody deploying 5G is doing anything differently than for 4G/LTE/3G/2G or even coax/DSL/fiber/whatever. The only functional difference is that it’s faster. It may operate with newer tech, faster chips, different frequency bands, different modulation techniques, etc… But at the end of the day, it’s just a means to get data from here to there. Nothing more.

Also, the government (or “the man” or “them” or whatever), already have an almost universal method to track every living person in the country. You willingly carry this tracker with you at all times; to work, to the park, to friends and family locations, etc… If you haven’t guessed yet, it’s a cellphone.

A big part of increasing the network speed on commercial wireless networks (cellular provider networks) is reducing cell size, aka, the amount of space each radio covers, and just increasing the number of cells (radios) serving an area. They know exactly which cell(s) your phone is connected to, where those cells are, which direction the antennas are facing and how far you are away from it (by signal strength, or rssi). This can be triangulated with other antennas that can “hear” the same signal, and all of their metrics (location, direction, distance), and that information can be quickly collected and cross referenced into a very accurate location.

This can be done without any software on your device, and very likely without having a valid service plan. As long as you’re in range and the cellular radio is on, “they” already know where you are. And you carry your phone with the radio online at all times, willingly. Pretty much once you get to have your own phone as a teenager, they know where you are and “they” have been able to track you since.

Having apps like Facebook and whatever that get your location information from the network and the app relays it to Facebook (or whatever corporate entity), is the equivalent for the corporate overlords. You just need to invite them in by having the application installed, and it can report that data to them.

Most do this entirely willingly and could not give any fewer shits about it.

This is not speculation, this is part of the technical capabilities of the systems. Whether or not the government or any legal entity is using the information for this purpose is up for debate, but the fact that it can be done isn’t in question. There are entire companies dedicated to building solutions which correlate connection data to geolocate connected devices with a high degree of accuracy.

A nontrivial part of the reason these systems exist is for e911, which can relay GPS information to emergency services. A system which does not work very well for most counties because their 911 systems are too old and underfunded. If it works correctly, your precise location and altitude (to determine if you’re on the ground floor or not), can be accessed by emergency services in the event that it is required. Usually those features are only accessible or activated if you actually dial 911 (or your country’s equivalent emergency number), but they’re built out and exist regardless of if you need/use it. This was made a requirement by the government since your physical address bound to the number you are calling from, is not necessarily where you are when you make the call. In the olden days of landlines, every phone number would come up with the service address when you called 911. Since the service address was the only location you could use that line from, that worked. Now that we’re almost entirely mobile, it’s not useful anymore, so this system was devised. Then the government promptly denied sufficient funding to 911 systems to implement their end of the system, while mandating that carriers set it up.

It’s stupid. But I digress.

The fact is, you are being tracked. It’s being done for your own good (re: emergency services), but it’s very easily abused by those who can access it. People like government agencies.

Whether they’re abusing it or not, that’s a question you’ll have to figure out for yourself.

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1 point
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-3 points

different frequency bands

Actual conspiracy theory: Very small fish tend to die a few days after being exposed to electromagnetic metal detectors. Fewer die if you hold them above the metal detectors. This is an observable phenomenon you can try at your own expense. While I don’t think 5G is a significant enough increase in energy density to cause you to die, there is a good chance it’s enough to introduce destabilization in homeostasis due to body warming. Especially if you live within 100 meters of a tower. Babies tend to be fussier sleepers when sleeping very near routers or baby monitors using a meager 2.4, 5, or 6 GHz, attempt experimentation at risk of the children.

Whether they’re abusing it or not, that’s a question you’ll have to figure out for yourself.

Not a conspiracy theory: Snowden proved they are. Everyone in a 5 Eyes country is stuck having their private moments exposed at any given moment for any reason.

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14 points

Does big tech want to control our minds with 5G towers and microchips hidden in covid vaccines

Oh they would like that though, it’s just not techically feasible.

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13 points

That’s the worst part about those distractors.

Verified evils are so numerous as to invite a lifetime of agitation.

Instead people make up BS others have to refute or report on.

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5 points
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The entire reason they do it is because it validates their instincts to ignore the real evil in front of them. There’s a reason why Republicans in particular have embraced increasingly crazy conspiracies as their party marches onward towards actual fascism.

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9 points

Asking the right questions, listening to the wrong people.

Sure, if you completely disassociate them from the answers that they act on (5G towers, lizard people, Jews, gay frogs) then yeah they’re just hunting for the answers.

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3 points

They’re also refusing to accept evidence they don’t like. Like there are two examples that spring to mind: the fact that the earth is an oblate spheroid and the fact that trans people existing is a natural phenomenon in our species. For the former there are mountains of evidence and anyone who’s spent any time near an ocean knows it’s true. It’s just not what your eyes or feet notice. They’re questioning their assumptions but they came to a conclusion and accept all flimsy evidence rather than more solid evidence that it’s not true. And they never ask why. For what fucking reason would people spend billions fabricating this conspiracy?

For the latter these people see a group of people who violate social norms in a way that they aren’t comfortable with anc do ask why. But they then answer it maliciously without evidence and repeatedly reject evidence and in the process eventually find themselves conspiring to hurt that group preemptively. Similar thinking happens against Jewish folks.

I applaud curiosity, I didn’t get enough sleep last night because of my own, and I’ve done a science before. But conspiracy theorists give their curiosity to dark parts of their psyche and let it run wild

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4 points
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So replace the noun with “rich people” and it is true?

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1 point

Yes. Antisemitism complains about the right things with the wrong target.

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Memes

!memes@lemmy.ml

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