To everyone, like me, who is new here on Mastodon -- I swear, I feel like I'm in Canada, escaping Gilead -- here are two posts by the primary developer of the platform (and owner of the non-profit that holds the trademarks etc) explaining that you should ignore people lecturing you about what you should and shouldn't post here. I now consider this issue settled, and will no longer respond to these folks. Time to embrace Mastodon! Thank you for welcoming us.

@Aravosis

Bearing in mind that the word seems to be that Eugen is not super-hospitable to (all) the ideas floated by the marginalized community.

On the "CWs" topic, I saw another post that said, basically, "do your best and you'll be fine." Seems reasonable.

(Not gonna CW my politics posts, though, since that'll be most of what I post eventually.)

@tarheel @Aravosis

"(Not gonna CW my politics posts, though, since that'll be most of what I post eventually.)"

From what I observe that is what most of the fuss is about, though. People expecting all politics to be behind CWs. And people who discuss that primarily feeling constrained by such expectation.

@CabinLoon @tarheel Apparently, the same folks want "food" behind a CW too. Not kidding. And everything about Elon and Twitter.

@Aravosis @CabinLoon

The food thing, I get where they're coming from. They'll probably be disappointed, but I, myself, would love CWs for Elon and Twitter, not because of trauma but because it makes it easier to just scroll on by.

@Aravosis @tarheel @CabinLoon Everyone is different and different things trigger them.

It doesn’t make sense to try to regulate such a thing beyond hiding violence and nudity. If it’s ‘Rated R’ put a CW.

Yelling at omeone about a lack of CW if they’re coming from a diff server? 🤦🏾‍♀️

If people are agitated by more than that, they should switch to a very small server, and only look at their home and local timelines.

@smadre75 @Aravosis @tarheel

And they can filter, mute and block as aggressively as they like.

@CabinLoon @tarheel @Aravosis

I agree that US politics being behind a CW would be great. More than any other country, Americans seem to think the whole world is their own politics. I remember following topics on Ukraine to try and find out what was happening with a 19th C war being waged in Europe. All the Americans had overtaken them arguing about which President they considered had caused it more. Never mind what Europeans want to know - all about US.

@Claireq @CabinLoon @tarheel There were a bunch of Americans discussing American politics. Why is that a problem? Do you not think that Greeks discuss Greek politics? Also, the US' oversized impact on the world since WWII means everyone, non-Americans included, discuss US politics disproportionately. It's neither good nor bad, it simply is. And is easily explained by circumstance. Don't like it? Mute and block.

@Aravosis @CabinLoon @tarheel

They were doing it on hashtags and threads that were the main places people were going for news about Ukraine. I like the idea of CW so there aren’t tonnes of American navel gazing to wade through to find what you want. No one said they couldn’t discuss politics, but it does appear to be Americans who are the ones saying they won’t use them for their political thoughts. I’m just pointing out why it would be nice if they did

@Aravosis @CabinLoon @tarheel

I’m not disinterested in American politics. I don’t want to block it all out. However, to have a social media space that isn’t 80% American would be lovely.

@Claireq @CabinLoon @tarheel It's hard to do when the lingua franca is English. Now, want to get rid of the Ameicans, at least the gringos, switch to Spanish or French! :)

@Claireq @Aravosis @tarheel

Aren't there regional instances for just that reason? And presumably more and more specialized instances will continue coming online. Each has localized rules for their instance which those users want. But expecting the most restrictive rules to then be used by everybody else - I don't get it. (But I'm also still learning, and not posting much.) What John quoted from Eugen just makes a lot of sense to me.

@CabinLoon @Aravosis @tarheel

I’m not completely not interested - I don’t want it completely out. I have been thinning about this. Maybe if a particular topic is dominant at a certain time, people could start to add CWs. That way we can still engage when we have the mental energy, but not be swamped by it.

The thing I am going off is how mentally low my husband got over Trump. Like, it’s bad, but we don’t live there. He came off Twitter, MH improved.

@CabinLoon

It’s that being swamped by negative American politics - that was such a huge part of the MH negative effect of Twitter, that I was looking forward to seeing dine differently here. The nuclear, “Then see none of it” feels more extreme than the “Add a 2 second CW to a topic that is everywhere right now, so people can make informed choices about their MH”

@Claireq @Aravosis @CabinLoon

I'd have to CW most of what I post, so that probably won't happen. Eventually, I'll be crossposting from my blog (which will be *mostly* political), so, people who are truly interested in what I have to say (which is probably... nobody) can filter based on that.

@tarheel @Aravosis @CabinLoon

I love links to blogs. I can open and leave on a tab on my phone, until I want/have time to read it. That’s my favourite kind of stuff to follow (and also why I always have around 20 phone tabs going at once!)