Heidi Li FeldmanA word about my decision not to use content warnings when I post about Kamala Harris and U.S. politics and law more generally: It is something I have given thought to, not a cavalier lapse. It seems to me the norms about CWs are in flux. I appreciate that not everybody is interested in these topics and that.... 1/
....not using CWs for U.S. politics and law related posts can seem, may even be, rather provincial of me. But, I believe democracy and rule of law in the U.S. are facing an existential crisis. Many of my posts are part of an effort to protect what democracy and rule of law we have and to rebuild and build to new heights. .... 2/
... Especially when fundraising for Kamala Harris, I feel we can't afford any friction in getting the word out, not even the small rub of having to go through a CW.
I hope things in the U.S. won't always be so dire. If and when we ever return to reasonable political, legal, and policy disagreements in a secular, pluralist, constitutional democracy, I may well add CWs to posts. ... 3/
I'm not prepared to debate the decision I have made. I am being careful not to use tags that put all my politics and law posts into the "explore stream". If you are specifically uninterested in the Mastodon community fundraising effort for Harris for President, I respectfully suggest you filter "Mastodon for Harris" and #MastodonForHarris." 4/4
Matt Blaze@heidilifeldman I find this idea, apparently common here, that a poster is required to anticipate and facilitate filtering for anything anyone anywhere might possibly find uninteresting, to be really weird.
@mattblaze That IS weird. But I understand that people on here not from or in the U.S. feel unduly inundated by U.S. users' posts during this election season. I just wanted to make it clear that I have thought about such matters, without casually disregarding others' experience of Mastodon.
Charles Herold@heidilifeldman @mattblaze I don't see the need for CWs, because Mastodon has such powerful filtering. I got sick of people talking about Wordle so I filter out wordle and I never see anyone's wordle's posts. If I didn't want to see posts on US politics I could easily filter those out (I saw a post recently on what words should belong in such a filter).
To be fair, if you've only got a handful of followers like me you don't really have anyone who's going to complain if you don't put in CWs.
Mᴀʀᴋ VᴀɴᴅᴇWᴇᴛᴛᴇʀɪɴɢ@cherold @heidilifeldman @mattblaze Most of my posts are about cats, astronomy or computer graphics. If you don't like those things, then don't follow me. But if you don't like my political posts, then treat them exactly the same way. The idea that I have to self-censor to keep you from... just hitting the unsubscribe?