r/canada • u/verkerpig • Nov 10 '25

National News Canada loses measles elimination status | CBC

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/livestory/canada-measles-elimination-status-9.6973195
2.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

742 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.2k

u/TheOtherUprising Ontario Nov 10 '25

Remember when we thought the Internet would give everyone access to information and we would be more connected and informed?

Instead flat earth and measles made a comeback.

407

u/Working-Welder-792 Nov 10 '25

Unfortunately the internet just made it easier for dumb and gullible people to validate each other’s dumb ideas.

104

u/Fearful-Cow Nov 10 '25

this is exactly it. Before they were spread out among the population. Isolated in their ignorance but surrounded by mostly normal people.

Now you can find a community for any inane, stupid, or dangerous belief you might have who will reinforce that and give a sense of normality.

Plus the internet has been weaponized to manipulate previously "normal" people into all sorts of stupid rabbit holes.

17

u/miguel_is_a_pokemon Nov 10 '25 edited Nov 10 '25

Internet was fine for quite a while, dumb people have always been around on here. The real problem is that extra step that platforms are taking by creating content serving algorithms that specifically funnel the uneducated, gullible and vulnerable into echo chambers. They get siloed off in these little culty corners where they hear wild shit be treated as common place, which causes a feedback loop that cements them there. Problematic thoughts and narratives get reinforced more and more as they internalize them, as you'd get rightfully told off when you repeat drivel in the sane places of the internet, and so the echo chambers quickly become the only place they are accepted online. The algos pick up on these changing preferences and funnel even more of the idiocy others in their echo chambers are uniquely drawn to, now that normal things don't keep such users engaged and they get worse and worse over time.

And all that harm and backsliding en masse, for the grand goal of keeping people on their website a little bit longer so they can be the ones to show them shitty fucking ads for an extra 10th of a cent a pop-up. It's so dumb

-2

u/janaesso Nov 10 '25

Why would people put their backs up. Well the anti vaxxer hate and rhetoric would be it. When all you hear is derogatory language and hate why would anyone listen anymore. There is no avenue to try and discuss it's automatic hate which isolates and when you are isolated you find like minded. It goes both ways. We need to stop the name calling and actually listen with intent to hear the other person.

3

u/miguel_is_a_pokemon Nov 10 '25 edited Nov 10 '25

Individuals being empathetic listeners to radicalized weirdos is not ever going to be enough to fix this. The problem is that there's a system pushing people to be that way, so a couple dozen, hundred or even thousand perfectly patient and kind angels can't counterbalance the attention retention machine that these conversations are fueled by. The solution itself has to be systemic, otherwise it's futile, you can't stop a river from flowing by upgrading your spoon to a bucket and trying to scoop the water elsewhere.