So, can someone explain to me why people who don't like posts about politics can't just not follow people who post about politics?
Genuine question. Because I do feel that the stakes are society itself, and the life or death of millions, and I do feel that OStatus/GNU Social could and should play an important role in this.
A civil discussion on this would be appreciated.
@forteller well.... devil's advocate here... why does everything need to be about everything?
@TimeSnow Sure, everything doesn't have to be about everything But we're talking about a general communications protocol here. In my view this should take over for both Twitter and Facebook and Slack and perhaps e-mail even?
It's like saying "don't talk about how we run the world/countries/communities on any webforums because some people might see it and not like it." Webforums is an important communications channel, and so is this. Should be used for everything important
@forteller well, yes and no... I think like any tool people will use it for their needs... and right now it seems a lot of people need a space that's not full of politics... I MOSTLY tweet and politics, and it's.... intense. A less intense space is good for my creative life... which is frankly my life life.
Plus I've been here for multiple hours across two days and haven't had a single argument. That certainly represents value to many folks.
@TimeSnow Sure. I totally agree with that in every way! But anyone can still create that space by following the right people and not follow the people who argues too much :)
Maybe there should be a way to make a list of accounts one could share with others as a way to recommend people to follow, so you could find great people without wading trough the entire firehose of the federated stream? #FeatureRequest
I see a problem with that approach and it has nothing to do with politics. If you follow only the people you add, that limits your feed to things you chose to read, explicitly. So you'll never discover new things. Let us say, I want to follow a broad selection of everything, but don't want kitten (or don't want politics, but kitten is neutral...). There is not way to do that. We would need a way to curate the feeds from kitten, but there isn't one.
@forteller @TimeSnow
@andrestmaur @TimeSnow Sure, the filter bubble is a huge issue that needs to be addressed. But filtering out everything that smells of politics can't be a solution :)
And yeah, it should be possible to follow any hashtag (like kittens) like you'd follow an account (but probably best to have it in a separate column/stream) and mute any hashtag (like politics or trump or whatever)
@forteller I'd love the ability to add hashtag columns. I am mostly being a devils advocate btw, to help spur the conversation... I PERSONALLY would like to see politics, but not politicians... more like a people's platform, instead of a corporate one... but my main goal is too have a nice experience instead of a series of arguments with idiots.