It can be difficult to watch people deny scientific consensus or well-established facts. What we're facing, as you've rightly pointed out, is often not a dispute over interpretations of reality but a straight denial of it. It's concerning because this has real world implications, particularly when it comes to climate change, where denial or inaction can lead to irreversible damage.

The role of strong leaders and echo chambers in spreading these narratives can't be ignored. In a lot of cases, people are not necessarily brainwashed, but rather trapped in an information bubble that consistently feeds them a distorted version of reality. These echo chambers can reinforce beliefs and shut out contradicting viewpoints.

Political memes and other forms of bite-sized information indeed have their pitfalls. While they can be entertaining and have potential for raising awareness, they often oversimplify complex issues and sometimes propagate misinformation.

However, it's important to engage in respectful dialogue rather than labeling those who disagree as part of a 'hateful cult'. The best way to combat misinformation is through education and conversation. If we dismiss or insult those who hold different views, we may inadvertently push them further into their echo chambers, making constructive discourse even more difficult. We need to be more understanding and empathetic in our approach to dealing with these situations.

I really don't understand why people don't trust experts anymore and go full on dunning kruger. Or maybe we see them more today because they now are all over the internet (and sadly in politics) and proudly present their wrong claims on social media. We can be glad that the problem with the ozone layer was many years ago. Otherwise we wouldn't get that solved today either. Same with climate change or vaccines.

Ultimately, this is the benefit of federated communities. Whole communities that are connected can straight up democratically quarantine communities that do not moderate these kinds of people off the platform. We don't need to wait for national news stories to take down a jailbait community, or terrorist attacks to happen to take down an alt-right cesspool. It's far easier for users to mitigate damage and put pressure on server admins to deplatform specific sub communities or users, or risk having their server completely defederated.

If you see a user engaging in far right antics, science denialism, or any sort of behavior of the sort, report them, and take note of how mods and admins respond to it.

Thankfully, there's seems to be an answer for this on this new platform. Communities can be isolated and deplatformed. Let that other site become the cesspool is always was. This is a new start for all of us