I would love to sometimes filter out any and all political posts, I think having this enabled as default on some instances would also be preferred by some users.
I’m a software dev, if it doesn’t require a lot of work I’m happy to make a Pull Request for this feature, but do people want this? Is there anyone I should maybe talk to before starting, or anything I should know?
Edit: I realise it won’t filter out ALL political posts, but even if it only catches half of the stuff, it could make the difference between being flooded with Trump/Musk news and not.
Some new users might turn away before knowing the can set filters etc. (which also aren’t perfect)
Why not both? Filter support would mean you’d have to update your list continuously based on current politicians and depend on certain words being used in the title/body.
A tag would still mean you’d have to depend on OP to select the right one (or perhaps on a mod to assign the right one), but at least the amount of variables would be infinitely less complex
My thinking is the reason the only tag available is NSFW is the first two words of that acronym: not safe. Open Lemmy in the break room and surprise! Your screen is covered in titties. The coworker sitting next to you complains to HR, and now your supervisor is explaining to you that exposing a coworker to sexual content without their consent is one of the forms of sexual harassment - which that facility has a zero tolerance policy for - so now they have to let you go.
Real consequences can come with NSFW content if it’s not filtered out in certain situations.
That kind of situation will never play out if you sub the word ‘titties’ above with Trump or Biden or whatever.
So, the urgency to tag NSFW content is high; the urgency to tag political content is non-existent.
Same with any other interest-based tag: I don’t care for sports or anime, which there’s a lot of both on this site. It’d be convenient for me personally to be able to just check a box in the settings to wipe that content from my Lemmy experience, but asking for that to be a core feature opens the can of worms of which topics get a built in tag, and which ones don’t. And even if we do that, whatever the result is won’t adhere to personal preference anyway, so let’s say they go ahead and add the politics and sports tags, but not anime: I’m still at back at square one needing a key word filter, and I’d still need to add key words for all three cuz without the need for a tag like with NSFW content, people won’t be nearly as diligent about tagging political, sports, or anime posts.
So imo just skip the mess: NSFW tag as-is, and customizable key word filter for the individual user to fiddle with according to their personal preference.