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Politics @beehaw.org
alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

effective immediately: there will be a one-month moratorium on US presidential election posts

this was proposed by @t3rmit3@beehaw.org and after some discussion we agree. in t3rmit3's simple terms:

State-level stuff, ballot measures, etc, no problem, but IMO there’s not going to be any productive discussion of the presidential race right now; there’s still too little information, too many emotions, etc.

the discussions already started about the presidential election will remain open, but in our view sufficient time has been given for venting frustration and expressing emotion about the result. additional discussion is likely to just be nasty and vitriolic as the blame game starts up between Democrats, between progressives and centrists, between identity groups, and so on. we don't want that and it's not interesting discussion. it will also be ill-informed discussion until much more in-depth studies are undertaken on the result. and in any case, a far better question than "what went wrong?" (which is beyond the ability of any person on Beehaw to influence) is "what can we do now?" (which people on Beehaw can influence, even in small ways). there are three months before Trump's second inauguration, and that is vital time for organizing, networking, and workshopping.

we would strongly encourage you to make posts, and off-Beehaw make connections, on those subjects. but at the very least: please don't post further US presidential stuff--we'll be removing it.

26 comments

  • This comes across as an extremely heavy-handed way of controlling the conversation. I get wanting to keep things civil, but taking a massive world-changing subject completely off the table, a subject that many many many of us clearly want to talk through, is not a reasonable response in my opinion.

    Who's to say some random comment in a random post on the presidential election doesn't come up with some incredible idea or solution? It's highly unlikely, but you know we're real people here, with real thoughts and ideas. You never know where that one good idea will come from, but it definitely won't be coming from here if you shut down the whole conversation. I understand this is your instance, and you can do what you want with it, but this is a disappointing response to a very live issue.

    • Who’s to say some random comment in a random post on the presidential election doesn’t come up with some incredible idea or solution?

      if someone does this i trust they won't limit it to a niche social media website with like 500 users, where it will have no actual visibility and will reach exactly zero actual powerbrokers. i don't think this is a remotely convincing hypothetical, personally, and its logic would extend far beyond talk of the presidential election.

      • As I said in the next sentence, "it’s highly unlikely, but you know we’re real people here, with real thoughts and ideas." Lemmy is the only social media I use, period. I don't contribute to any other social media, so it's perhaps more likely than you're thinking, but still, like I said, highly unlikely. Why take the chance?

  • So, in the Politics sub, you're disallowing political content. How, exactly, are you any better than Reddit here?

  • The post notably included the statement:

    that’s not the kind of thing that should happen without the community agreeing to it

    With no voices in support in the original post and currently the only two voices in support here being the mods themselves.

    • With no voices in support in the original post and currently the only two voices in support here being the mods themselves.

      bluntly: this is not a democracy, we don't pretend it is, and we've never run it that way so this is not a particularly relevant consideration for us. democracy at the scale of communities is an incredibly fraught issue that requires a lot of time and energy to administer we don't have. in any case none of our referendums in the community (which we've done before) have been majority votes, they've solicited feedback that informs our judgement. our judgement here is this is a good idea regardless of how the community feels about it, and that even if we didn't implement the moratorium we'd be cracking down on posts, handing out bans, and doing sweeping removals because we've been more permissive than our usual moderation on the subject and let behavior we'd normally step in on go.

      in short: even if the moratorium were removed, that'd just mean heavier-handed enforcement from this point forward. if people really want no moratorium then they should be prepared to start catching 30-day bans (or permanent bans if they're off instance) for any unkind behavior.

  • For what it's worth, I appreciate this. I'm not in the right headspace for the usual circular firing squad right now.

26 comments