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...

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 😭".

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.

Correlation is not causality causation. Edit: English is not my native language

Correlation doesn't mean causation

This is so important to understand.

Oh yes? Who says that? God I can't take it, I swear I'm gonna cut myself... irl and in Minecraft.

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.

Unsurprising.

The dark web exists to serve criminals, subversives, and paranoid people. Why else would someone go to the trouble of accessing a part of the internet with a worse user interface that requires additional work to access? There is a pre-existing filter for people who are mentally unwell.

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