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461 points GavinAnderegg | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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PaulHoule ◴[] No.42151244[source]
My take is that Bluesky is a nicer place than Mastodon.

Personally I think politics are terrible on microblogging platforms for the reason that you can't say very much in 140 characters or even 1400 characters.

A common kind of profile on that kind of platform is: "There are good people and bad people and I'm one of the good people"

It is very easy to other people and share memes that build group cohesion while driving other people away. Really making progress requires in politics a lot of "I agree with you about 90% but there is 10% that I don't" or "Well, I negotiated something in the backroom that you'd really hate but headed off a situation you would have thought was catastrophic but you won't appreciate that I did it so you and I are both better off if I don't tell you" and other sorts of nuance, you don't want to see how the sausage is made, etc.

To stand Mastodon (where you would have thought fascists were taking over the world a year ago if you believed what you read) I have to have about 20 or so block rules.

I see some people with the same kind of profiles on Bluesky but see a lot less othering in my feed because the "Discover" feed on Bluesky filters out a lot of angry content. My rough estimate is that it removes about 75% of the divisive political junk. That

(1) Immediately improves my feed, but also

(2) Reduces the amount of re-posted angry political content (it's like adding some boron to the coolant in a nuclear reactor) and

(3) Since angry political memes don't work anymore people find a different game to play

My guess is the X-odus folks are less agreeable than average for the same reason why people who "left California" to go to Colorado or someplace else are less agreeable. Those who go are less agreeable than those who stay. On the other hand, a certain amount of suppression of negativity could stop it from spreading and might not even be noticed as "censorship".

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mandmandam[dead post] ◴[] No.42151452[source]
[flagged]
parl_match ◴[] No.42151488[source]
See, your post is exactly what OP is talking about.
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mandmandam ◴[] No.42153633[source]
You think comments like mine should be flagged/invisible by default?

... Idk man, seems kinda fascist tbh.

OP made blocking rules as a personal preference - 100% fine.

Expecting censorship of political topics like rising fascism as the default - dangerously naive.

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sph ◴[] No.42154859[source]
Does every platform need to become the frontline of American politics?
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1. mandmandam ◴[] No.42155647[source]
First, a few points:

* The genocide in Israel isn't just an American project. Many countries leaders and media are complicit.

* Fascism isn't just rising in America.

* American politics affects the entire world. Simply look at a map of US military bases, or the threats we level against courts and regulators and leaders.

* Most platforms heavily suppress huge swathes of political content which falls outside the current Overton window (which has, indeed, been moving toward fascism for decades across the West).

Second, Mastodon is a decentralized forum. Complaining about political content on it, in a time of historic inequality, and then asking if all platforms need to be a "frontline of American politics" is really quite silly. It would be like complaining about all the business news on HN, then asking if every platform needs to be so relentlessly capitalistic.