Politics and Communities
After launching 500 Social to little fanfare yesterday, Jack Baty and Dave Rogers have been having an interesting conversation about politics in communities, and I wanted to chime in, since it's focussed on 500 Social.
Before we go any further, I love that the back and forth between Jack and Dave on their blog's has been polite and courteous. It's always nice to see people acting like adults online.
Anyway, I digress...
Dave wrote a post about his thoughts on the "no politics rule" on 500 Social, Jack then responded, and Dave replied back.
Go read the posts; they do provide food for thought, but they haven't changed my mind.
I agree with Dave that politics are very important, and should be discussed openly. But my argument is that there are plenty of places for those conversations to take place, and I don't want 500 Social to be one of them. I'd prefer for it to be a place of more light-hearted discussions - not everything needs to be a deep and meaningful discourse about the world's problems. To be fair to Dave, he gets that, saying:
I don't think I'm the kind of person Kev has in mind, and he's entitled to run his instance the way he wishes. I don't wish to impose my views on his goals and objectives.
People on 500 Social can still seek out and discuss political topics with others, I'd just prefer they didn't publish post about them there. But if someone is having a political discussion and a member of 500 Social wants to chime in, who am I to say they can't? Of course they can. Like I said, it's important.
But for me, it's frustrating. When I look at the various "trending" feeds on Mastodon, all I see is Trump, Harris & Biden. Honestly, it's exasperating. Especially given the fact that I'm not American.
But everything is political, right?
Hmmm I'm not sure it is. The oft quoted "everything is political" examples are things like iOS vs Android, Coke vs Pepsi, and Linux vs Windows. Yes, they're divisive topics, and politics plays a small part is people's decisions there. But they're not inherently political.
When I wrote the "no politics" rule, I was specifically talking about "real" politics. You know, governments and shit.
Ultimately, the way I see it is this; if I want to go and read about the latest Trump drama, I'll go visit the Guardian or BBC News. But if I want to go read about what people are up to on a personal level - the thing they've built. The thing(s) they're passionate about. The jokes, the pictures, the memes. I want that space to be Mastodon.
If others disagree, that's totally fine - it's why we have different instances and there's a lot of power in that.
So if you wanna talk about the things you're doing in your life, or the things you're passionate about (that aren't politics or religion), feel free to come and join 500 Social. But if you feel strongly that you want to talk about those topics, maybe a different instance is best.
Thanks to Jack and Dave - I do enjoy conversations like this, and I really like that we're able to share our own ideas on our own blog's. May the open web never die. :-)
Want more?
So you've read this post and you're still not satisfied? Ok then, here's some other stuff for you to do: