Correlation doesn't mean causation
This is so important to understand.
this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
67 points (86.8% liked)
Technology
4795 readers
591 users here now
Which posts fit here?
Anything that is at least tangentially connected to the technology, social media platforms, informational technologies and tech policy.
Post guidelines
[Opinion] prefix
Opinion (op-ed) articles must use [Opinion] prefix before the title.
Rules
1. English only
Title and associated content has to be in English.
2. Use original link
Post URL should be the original link to the article (even if paywalled) and archived copies left in the body. It allows avoiding duplicate posts when cross-posting.
3. Respectful communication
All communication has to be respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences.
4. Inclusivity
Everyone is welcome here regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
5. Ad hominem attacks
Any kind of personal attacks are expressly forbidden. If you can't argue your position without attacking a person's character, you already lost the argument.
6. Off-topic tangents
Stay on topic. Keep it relevant.
7. Instance rules may apply
If something is not covered by community rules, but are against lemmy.zip instance rules, they will be enforced.
Companion communities
!globalnews@lemmy.zip
!interestingshare@lemmy.zip
Icon attribution | Banner attribution
If someone is interested in moderating this community, message @brikox@lemmy.zip.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I'm reasonably certain that it would be much more accurate to say that people who are prone to depression, paranoia, suicidal thoughts, self-injury and digital self-harm are more likely to use the dark web.
Broadly, this isn't the first time that it's struck me that pedantic moralizing often relies on reversing cause and effect...
You eloquently expressed my thoughts. But I find the second part of your comment particularly insightful. It strikes a deeper chord worth what might motivate that reversal.
It's a thing I hadn't really thought about before, but as I was writing that, I was thinking how many times I'd written similar things in the past - about heavy metal music, comic books, dungeons and dragons, violent video games...
And it struck me that that was too consistent to be coincidental - that there had to be some basic failure at work there.
And thinking sbout it more - it's at least broadly the same dynamic as the endless loop of class- and race-based bigotry. Systems are established by which members of a particular class or race (or ethnic group or gender or sexual persuasion or...) are disadvantaged - poorer nutrition, less stable housing, poorer education, fewer opportunities, etc. - then point to the ignorance, frustration and antisocial tendencies that triggers as nominal evidence of their inherent inferiority, by which they're rightly denied equal treatment.
I'm willing to bet that there's a significant body of work out there on this topic
I would say it's more like, yeah of course when a "silent majority" forces a tiny percentage of people to rely on obscure tools to fight constant attacks on their right to free speech, then yeah that world might have that tiny percentage struggling more than the group attacking for fun
You mean buy drugs and tickets to Epstein Island? Because that's what the Dark Web is used for.
It's also used for anonymous communication where there's significant privacy concerns. There's several news organizations that have a dark web presence for sources to share sensitive information/stuff they could be persecuted for.
But yeah, there's a lot of that other stuff going on as well.
When you're targeted enough, you use it for regular email and stuff. Not sure if you get that. There are probably people who use piefed through tor
I use Lemmy through tor. And everything else
We had the "AI chatbot" mental illness link the other day, what's next, people using apps to bet on sports are poorer?
The complement of the surface web is the deep web, not the dark web.
Deep web = sites that are not indexed by search engines. Surface web = sites that are.
Yep, the term they were looking for is clear web.
No shit suicidal people are turning to the dark web. People are not allowed to talk frankly about it hardly anywhere. Apparently we can't even talk shit about ourselves without it being labeled "digital self-harm 😭".
Yeah, there are tons of places where you can't even start a frank discussion about it without just being spammed with the suicide prevention hotline and have your post/comments taken down. Yeah, it's SUPER important that people know those resources exist when they're in crisis but you can't just send them that, block them from talking to people when they may not have anyone else to talk to, then congratulate yourself on a job well done.
Correlation is not ~~causality~~ causation. Edit: English is not my native language
Causation*
but yes
He was still right.
I wonder if this is less of a link between those things and the dark web, and more of a link between the mental issues and being beyond terminally online and over-informed about all the most horrible shit out there.
The only way you can't have poor mental health in the empire is to consciously ignore everything bad all the time. This doesn't count as a 'mental health problem' (it clearly is), as its how the bourgies want us to be.
I have legit never seen the term "surface web" used to describe a person surfing the web. wth lol
I mean yeah. Those seeking such things are often not particularly mentally healthy and if their dark web experiences are outside of the "friend's server" type deal much of the sort of stuff you have to go to the dark web for isn't going to be good for your mental health
Oh yes? Who says that? God I can't take it, I swear I'm gonna cut myself... irl and in Minecraft.
OK, but let's make this about AI, create a community about it, and agitate people into a rage until no one can shut up about it. !fuck_dark_web@lemmy.world