She’s almost 70, spend all day watching q-anon style of videos (but in Spanish) and every day she’s anguished about something new, last week was asking us to start digging a nuclear shelter because Russia was dropped a nuclear bomb over Ukraine. Before that she was begging us to install reinforced doors because the indigenous population were about to invade the cities and kill everyone with poisonous arrows. I have access to her YouTube account and I’m trying to unsubscribe and report the videos, but the reccomended videos keep feeding her more crazy shit.
Consider it from a different angle - if a techy Q-anon “fixed” the algorithm of someone whose device they had access to due to tech help. That person would rightfully be pissed off, even if the Q-anon tech nerd explained that it was for their own good and that they needed to be aware of this stuff etc.
Obviously that’s materially different to the situation at hand, but my point is that telling someone that what you’ve done is necessary and good will probably only work after it’s helped. Initially, they may still be resistant to the violation of trust.
If I think of how I would in that situation, I feel a strong flare of indignant anger that I could see possibly manifesting in a “I don’t care about your reasons, you still shouldn’t have messed with my stuff” way, and then fermenting into further ignorance. If I don’t let the anger rise and instead sit with the discomfort, I find a bunch of shame - still feeling violated by the intervention, but sadly realising it was not just necessary, but actively good that it happened, so I could see sense. There’s also some fear from not trusting my own perceptions and beliefs following the slide in reactionary thinking. That’s a shitty bunch of feelings and I only think that’s the path I’d be on because I’m unfortunately well experienced in being an awful person and doing the work to improve. I can definitely see how some people might instead double down on the anger route.
On a different scale of things, imagine if one of my friend who asked for tech help was hardcore addicted to a game like WoW, to the extent that it was affecting her life and wellbeing. Would it be acceptable for me to uninstall this and somehow block any attempts to reinstall? For me, the answer is no. This feels different to the Q-anon case, but I can’t articulate why exactly
Better to be embarrassed temporarily than lose a decade of precious time with your family on stuff that makes you angry on the internet.
You’re seeing a person who freely made choices here, perhaps like the gamer, but I see a victim of opportunists on youtube, who may have clicked on something thinking it was benign and unknowingly let autoplay and the recommendations algorithm fry their brain.
You probably think the gamer situation is different because they, unlike the boomer, are aware of what’s happening and are stuck in a trap of their own making. And yes, in such a situation, I’d talk it out with them before I did anything since they’re clearly (in some ways) more responsible for their addiction, even though iirc some people do have a psychological disposition that is more vulnerable that way.
edit: I want to clarify that I do care about privacy, it’s just that in these cases of older angry relatives (many such cases), I prioritise mental health.