LogFAQs > #979966295

adjl posted...

Honestly, I'm expecting this won't even change that much for most social boards in the long run, gradual death of CE aside. For the first few weeks there'll be efforts to close "political" topics, and particularly butthurt posters may be able to get rid of posts/topics they don't like by marking them as political, but long-term I doubt it'll be worth mods' time to actively police boards where nobody has any problems and stamp out political discussions and we can probably just keep posting as normal. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that official policies don't exactly amount to much (like committing to removing problematic ads), and while I expect there'll be a concerted effort to keep up appearances in the early days, I doubt it'll last.

And, of course, there will be the major question (thus far unanswered by the powers that be) of what, specifically, constitutes "political" (and, therefore, banned) discussion?

If Justin Trudeau comes to my home town and I write about it, is that political? If there's a protest against him and I write about that without editorializing, is that political? If there's a mass shooting and we write about that, is that political? If no, what happens when people start discussing the causes and the discussion drifts (as it invariably will) to gun laws and mental health treatment, where is the line where it becomes political? If the latest Marvel movie comes out and a historically white character is cast as a person of colour, is posting news of that political? Is discussing it political? If there's a protest that draws a police response, is posting support/condemnation of the police actions political?

This is one of the many, many reasons why this move is so dumb. "Politics" is this massive, roiling grey area that is ill-defined, with no clear boundaries. If you tasked me with banning "political" speech on a forum like this, I would respond that unless you key in your definition a lot more tightly, a ban of that nature is borderline unenforceable.