please CW and tag politics and current events

i live in a madmax hellscape of a state and primarily use fedi as one of my ways to get an escape

i can't filter it out or avoid it if you don't tag or CW it properly

no, CWs aren't censorship

you can say litterally anything you want, CWs just give people the *choice* to hear your take

thats it, thats all CWs do

im serious

the reality is that some people (me included) have trouble proccessing extreme stress

CWs give us the option to choose if we are in a safe headspace to engage

if you choose not to use CWs, the only choice to avoid seeing your stressful political post is to mute or block you entirely

@Aetous Exactly! Those who claim CWs are censorship fail to take into account the dynamics of boosting and people in a community actually looking out for each other.

The fediverse is a highly tribalistic community; there are insiders and outsiders. People who post without CWs are seen as outsiders, and any sensitive content they post without as CW is seen as an attack. The immediate result is a backlash and a refusal to engage. Accounts are muted and blocked; content is ignored and muted.

By posting sensitive content without a CW, the only thing people do is fail at passing a networked human filter; you can try to bypass the filter, but people act as antibodies and mute or even report said content.

To put it another way, content warnings are like a wax-seal for messages in a medieval society; you show the seal to your followers and they relay the message to others. If there's no seal, there's no sharing.

If anything, people opposed to the CW are accustomed to a heterogeneous, monocultural society where their messages are approved by their peers, because people offended by their messages have already left those toxic spaces.

And where do you think, dear reader, those people disenfranchised by uncensored and unrestrained messages went? Here. We are the people you kicked out, and we will NOT tolerate any more of your toxic posts. We set the rules here, and they're simple: Use CWs, or get ostracized for failing to respect the community.

CWs are a sign of respect.

(Side note: BIPOC people talking about racism without CWs are a different matter, because CWs are meant to protect and not isolate marginalized communities. Recognize the difference)

@Aetous uuuuugh, for real. that reminds me so much of when people on twitter were throwing a hissy fit over mastodon.art being moderated well. there was this one dude in my mentions who insisted that CWing nudity is censorship. and no matter how much i pointed out that nobody keeps him from posting nudity, the rules of how to conduct oneself in the place merely prescribe that one does so in a certain manner, he kept reiterating that ‘censors will find ways to make censorship sound reasonable.’

how does one even begin with people like these?

@Aetous it's the idea that "if I can't force people to listen, it's censorship". An entitlement to other people's attention.

seems to be a thing where purity leftists and "free speech" right wingers agree even if they don't want to admit it
@Aetous honestly the only thing bothering me about cw is that it kinda interrupting me reading flow. I wish this app was giving me a "show all cw by default" switch.