Good morning! A post just rolled across my fedi-timeline saying not to post about politics on Mastodon, so I'm here to remind you that:
1 "politics" refers to decision-making about how to live together in groups
2 choosing to not participate in political discussion is saying you support the status quo, and is a political stance
3 abstaining from politics because you feel safe from its impacts is a privilege and a choice to abandon your more vulnerable neighbours
@inkstainedmags @JonChevreau In my opinion better to talk about whatever you want, but if you think there's the possibility it might trigger other people then use content warnings. I would think it's better to do that than risk being indefinitely muted.
Also in regard to politics there are lots of different people from different countries and backgrounds that might see it and not have the same understanding of the context.
P. S. I love your profile pic Maggie! 💕
@everentropy @Tarbh @inkstainedmags @JonChevreau
I'm ambivalent about content warnings. For posts that are triggering, they
absolutely have a place. But for everyday things like politics, which are both banal and vital, I disagree that they should have a CW as default, for all the reasons that others have cited.
If you cannot see what is happening in the world, how can you deal with it? Individuals can filter posts if they want to, I don't see why we should hide normal conversations.
@Tarbh @inkstainedmags @JonChevreau
In my corner of fedi, before the recent mass migration, CWs were used liberally.
There a few reasons that we had a norm of CWing on pol posts. I'm an anglophone and pol posts are overwhelmingly about US specific issues. Canadians and Britons are far fewer in number and we don't want to drown in posts about the issues of a country we don't live in. This is why the convention is specifically "US pol" or "UK pol" etc. Americans otherwise very rarely specify location as they tend to assume every anglophone is also in their country. Crafting a mute for US pol to fit with the colloquial style of Americans talking about politics would be a baroque regex of much intricacy and beauty. All fifty state capitols, the names of every governor, 100 senators, it would be incredible. Or you could be a good neighbour and CW with US pol and the name of your city or state if applicable.
Another reason was the constant crisis of daily horserace political drama on twitter. This has lots of trees but no forest. Zooming out from the daily disaster helps one get perspective and build resilient communities of politically engaged people who are not burned out from regular online outrage, but can use this as a space to connect. Again, its fine if people want to talk about whatever the latest right wing democrat has voted, buyta CW means that the rest of us - who are not necessarily even in the US - don't have to handcraft mutes against all US discourse but can instead dip in and out as we wish.
Maybe its a privilege for Americans to avoid the outrage of the day, but - I can't stress this enough - not everybody here is in the US and don't want to be subject to US political hegemony.
@revk @inkstainedmags @JonChevreau I see it as the difference between the twitter attitude of "I will shout my opinion at you" and the mastodon "let's have a conversation". Yes, people can mute you if you upset them, and you could argue that it's your right to offend shout if you wish, but if everyone shouts at once no-one listens.
CWs are probably a poor name: think of it like a subject line of an email, and it becomes far less contentious.
@Geoff @revk @JonChevreau @inkstainedmags The problem is it is not akin to an email subject line at all, it causes by default the content to be hidden while removing it makes it more easily visible - making the intention of it clear - to hide content.
It does however seem to be wielded by some to suppress speech the speech of minority groups by demanding that discussion of political issues affecting them carry a CW like a scarlet letter.
@revk @Geoff @inkstainedmags @JonChevreau content warnings are not about preventing "offense" they are about preventing pain. There are many topics or images that cause some people anxiety or sadness. Pictures of food can stress people with eating disorders. Eye contact can cause panic. Talk of terrible politicians can cause anxiety in people who live in places with those politics but no ability to escape or change their situation.
There is no list of topics to warn about. But if you can empathize with people, you might want to use CWs for some topics. That's it.
@sixohsix @revk @Geoff @inkstainedmags @JonChevreau yeah the opinion that CWs should be used sparingly is a common opinion of someone brand-new to Fediverse.
The opposite is more true: you will find more respect and a larger audience when you give out the respect for people's eyeballs by using CWs liberally.
CWs should rightly be renamed "subject line" because it's a phrase to let you know if you want to click before exposing your eyeballs. For traumatized people, that consent is everything.
@CanonicalAbstract @wilbr @sixohsix @revk @inkstainedmags @JonChevreau I've started putting all my new posts behind CWs just as a matter of course. It just seems polite to me.
It mildly irritates me that hashtags in CWs aren't searchable (apparently by design), because it means I must put a hashtag in the main body as well as the cw and the CW takes up text space. But 🤷♂️
@CanonicalAbstract @wilbr @revk @Geoff @inkstainedmags @JonChevreau the way you navigate nuance is by trying things and by observing what others do. Just like going to a new place (a social event or club meeting) you see what people do and you do it too. See what others on your instance cw, and try doing that too, because that's your local culture.
Remember, content warnings are not about avoiding offence, but harm. Unlike Twitter people here will not scream at you for "offending them", or quote your tweet as a form of punishment. You might get a polite message from someone asking you to CW some topic in the future. That's about it.
@CanonicalAbstract @sixohsix @revk @Geoff @inkstainedmags @JonChevreau "I shouldn't have to tiptoe around" is very often a euphemism for "I like behaving without regard for anyone else but myself, why would you even suggest that I give a shit about politeness."
You say it should be comfortable. Comfortable for who?
We've let you know what's polite, here. Take that information as you will.
@luka @sixohsix @revk @Geoff @inkstainedmags @JonChevreau right, I even like to think of it more like trying to help my friends avoid doomscrolling and the 24hr news cycle. We all usually know what the awful news of the day is, so you can give people a choice whether they feel like engaging with it further or not.
I have a giant exception for harmed people talking about how they've been harmed. Obviously that needs eyeballs, we shouldn't demand victims adhere to some desired tone or civility.
@Jofish5000 @inkstainedmags @JonChevreau
I disagree, and the analogy doesn't work. Politics are both unavoidable, and the action of burying one's head should be active on the part of the one who wants to be buried. People should not have to tiptoe around issues that impact their daily lives for the sake of someone else's *being tired of thinking about it*. This is not a trauma trigger we're talking about.
If you don't want to read something someone has to say, you can just... Not. Most political topics are obvious at the skim of a few lines, the mute option is *right there*, and so is your ability to scroll.
Moreover, the Fediverse is not someone else's home that new folks are just inviting themselves into. These are servers set up specifically for public access and participation. If the point was actually to have spaces with limited topics of discussion of mutual interest, or where strict social protocols existed when discussing anything more complex than pablum, then a) the software wouldn't be open source, and b) the network would be opt in, not opt out.
You can have your politics free enclave, if you want. Just spin up your own instance, and work with a whitelist.
Moreover, your *home timeline* is not your home. It's your own personal list of content from speakers who you have curated. If you don't like what some of them are saying, just remove them from your list, and further curate which topics or keywords you want to mask.
You have that power. The responsibility is yours.
@inkstainedmags @JonChevreau a lot of people think CWs are for avoiding topics, but that’s not it at all! If I want to avoid something, I don’t need a CW: I have filters
CWs are nice for topics like politics where I DO often want to engage, but sometimes I don’t have the spoons. People being willing to CW things like politics means I can take a break from those topics when needed. It makes the platform more useable.
Think of it as akin to a “spoiler” tag; it gives people a choice about engaging with that content on a case-by-case basis. It’s really nice and welcoming!
This is *exactly* what CWs are for and one of the many uses of them that's been a standard part of Fediverse culture for years.
Convention is to shorten it to "pol" with a country code first: "uspol" or "ukpol" or whatever. You can add a + or minus at the end to indicate if it's good or bad news, if you deem it appropriate.
The whole CW discourse has gotten kinda zany since this big wave of ex-Twitter newcomers, but trust me on this: CWing politics is good and wise.
(Abstaining from politics is a privilege; abstaining from having politics shoved down your throat repeatedly when it isn't even your country, or you already know and are sick of hearing it, or you have issues with anxiety, or you just need a moment to ready yourself mentally before confronting it is good mental hygiene.
Enabling others to make that choice is *actively protecting* your more vulnerable neighbors. And the neighbors of anyone who wants to boost your post.)
(but yeah, "don't post about politics on Mastodon" is flat-out insane. One of the benefits of this place is that you can actually have fruitful political discussions rather than just screaming into the void about it. But it's things like liberally CWing stuff that give us that.)
(Addendum: Masto flat-out refused to post this until I added a cw, simply due to its length. Not sure if that's a common feature or if it's specific to the instance I'm on, but either way, there you go. That's the sort of thing the existing culture expects.)
@dalias CW allows someone to decide if they want to read a post in that moment. Requiring them to unfollow/mute is asking them to permanently remove themselves from the conversation. The latter feels very heavy-handed and exclusionary, and overall disrespectful on the part of the author.
Notice how I gave you a short subject line, letting you opt-in to reading my opinion? Same deal.
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