Precisely because this is happening in plain sight, various members of our family, myself included, have been engaging with him to try and pull him out of Plato’s proverbial cave. This task is incredibly difficult. [...]
It's enormously difficult to deal with even for a family member that you know fairly well. Now imagine trying to deal with it at scale where you're trying to reach (likely) complete strangers who are not confused, but actively engaged as conscious information and/or real world warriors and smart enough to anticipate, avoid, and deflect counter-arguments.
There are already people who monitor these social groups but actively and algorithmically, and because of that are aware of where and how to locate them when a hub goes down.
I'm assuming you are echoing my case for making sure they do their business in the open. Or did I misread you?
In our particular case there violence isn't of concern at all. It's just an older man getting pulled into a dark corner full of hateful messaging. This is having negative consequences as friends and some family don't want to be around that kind of negativity.
In other words, our older family member's case is more about FB effectively destroying his quality of life than him becoming a problem for someone else. It's really sad to watch.
With regards to your comment about it being harder to intercede in the case of complete strangers. Yes, absolutely agreed, it's nearly impossible with someone you've known your entire life I could not imagine what it might take to "reprogram" a complete stranger.
My assumption, when it comes to the case of random strangers, wasn't that someone would necessarily intercede to try and play amateur psychologist. What I would expect is for law enforcement to become involved, bring experts into the fold and deal with each case as necessary. I am not a psychologist, so I can't even being to presume to know how or if this could be done.
My other assumption is that the task is much easier when the conversations happen in the open. That said, I am not in law enforcement, I could be completely wrong, it might be the case that the various agencies can do a better job when these people think they are invisible. I don't know.
It's enormously difficult to deal with even for a family member that you know fairly well. Now imagine trying to deal with it at scale where you're trying to reach (likely) complete strangers who are not confused, but actively engaged as conscious information and/or real world warriors and smart enough to anticipate, avoid, and deflect counter-arguments.
There are already people who monitor these social groups but actively and algorithmically, and because of that are aware of where and how to locate them when a hub goes down.