this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
84 points (83.3% liked)

No Stupid Questions

36128 readers
991 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

People use it like everyone fucking has the innate knowledge of every acronym out there

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 87 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Here's an example. Let's say that you don't know how open source works, and I told you the following:

Why are you in Lemmy? It's open source so any hacker can screw with it, and infect your computer with viruses. You'll never know, right?

That's FUD: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It's a disingenuous tactic to convince you to not do something, based on the following:

  • You fear a certain outcome. In this case, a computer virus.
  • That fear is vaguely associated with something that is uncertain for you. In this case, how a hacker could use Lemmy to inject viruses into your computer.
  • The odds of that outcome happening are doubtful; it may happen, it may not, otherwise you could call me out for not happening. In this case, even if you don't get a virus from using Lemmy, I can still say "well, some people get it, some don't, but let's play it safe and avoid Lemmy."

This shitty strategy is fairly used in the tech industry because most people are clueless about tech, but they know that it has a big impact on their lives. However you'll also see this in politics, religious debate (Pascal's Wager is FUD), and others.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Literally all VPN sponsored segments on YouTube.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yup. There are reasons to use a VPN, mind you; but they involve the person actually knowing the risk, when it applies, and taking a cost vs. risk judgment. The FUD in those sponsors is basically "you don't know so you might be at risk, subscribe to our VPN juuuuust in case".

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They straight out lie in those ads though. Like for example VPNs don't protect your privacy at all when you're browsing. Just because it says private in their name doesn't mean you're anonymous. Cookies and trackers work all the same via a VPN.

[–] bigboismith 3 points 1 year ago

Or the biggest thing people forget, being logged in.

[–] rishado 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's an exaggeration though, most of them are coming at you with the 'hey! You can watch netflix germany now!" rather than 'hackers are coming to get you'

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Yeah they have all kinda changed their tune after Tom Scott came out saying they were all straight out lies. https://youtu.be/WVDQEoe6ZWY?si=Gnrk4Bx1kdFQStJP

After this video I could tell you tubers changed their ads. They still lie, but much less.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'd say the 'D' (hah!) is more about making you doubt your position or thoughts on the matter. In your example, it'd make you doubt your choice to try using Lemmy, because of the fear and uncertainty.

[–] HerrBeter 7 points 1 year ago

It's part of the short and distort tactic too, https://realpeoples.media/the-basics-on-cointelpro-and-how-to-counter-it/

I feel like tesla uses it to fight against Unions in Sweden

[–] force 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This shitty strategy is fairly used in the tech industry because most people are clueless about tech

Ah, so like every manager and client to ever exist in software development. I see

[–] DJKayDawg -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the D stands for 'Division'. Divide groups with infighting such as wedge issues.

Uncertainty and doubt are synonymous.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Canonically the "D" in the acronym is understood as "doubt", as you can see here, here (2 of 2), here. Division and infighting play no direct role here.

Uncertainty and doubt are synonymous.

They do overlap but complete synonymous are extremely rare. And I believe that, in this context, they refer to different things - the uncertainty as lack of knowledge on how something works, and the doubt on the outcome itself. (@[email protected] offers an alternate explanation, where the doubt is ideological.)