Hello all,
This community will be removed from the instance in the near future because it is unmoderated, does not align with the instance’s focus, and frequently introduces political content into the local feed, which is contrary to the instance’s goal of minimizing political content.
Alternative versions of aboringdystopia are available on other instances:
I would prefer locking the community to avoid losing visibility of the posts, but unfortunately locking a community is not an available feature.
The instance has had this policy for over 4 years. The sidebar reads:
The goal when creating this instance was to a place to discuss about scientific discoveries, post pictures of nature, and have a set of communities for this while avoiding polarizing content. If someone wants to discuss politics they can click on ‘All’ and go right to it. The scope is explicitly anti-politics because I do not want to moderate a politically charged or polarizing environment, and I know that many people with interests like mine will also appreciate such a space existing because they see enough pictures of Donald Trump and polarizing discussions elsewhere.
I do not disagree with you broadly, and that is to an extent why I use common sense and do not enforce the “no politics” rule religiously. There is quite a bit politics that gets through. Although I do prefer to offer users of this instance a politics free experience, if no one complains I usually let it go.
In this case: I have noticed posts in the front page that have nothing to do with science lately, and they came from this specific community. I then saw some US politics characters attached to articles that had nothing to do with science. I looked through the community and most of it is off-topic, so it makes more sense to lock the community.
I’m sorry this upsets you, I should have removed the community as soon as it was created, but I did not realize what it was.
I’m with this instance for as long as you keep it running. I think you take a good approach.
I think it’s fine to give communities a chance. If it was moderated I might even advocate giving the community a warning. There are ways this community could have been both science and politics even with the boring dystopia theme - a tough intersection, but we have other niche communities. The way submitters didn’t played by the rules, and no one was putting an effort into moderating it, so it’s left mander’s scope. I like that you generally take a lenient approach – I think that’s important for building communities. It’s also important to have and enforce some structure that actually maintains the larger community of the instance.
I think you handled it well.
We aren’t the ones that made science politically charged or polarizing, the coordinated global movement of rightwing extremists did.
What are you going to do when conservatives force science further into the realm of politics? Stay silent about it here until all the science funding is cut and climate change discussion is barred from public discourse?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11229655/
Wake up and get with the times, it is 2026, we have to actively defend science explicitly and in political contexts not just talk about it abstractly on the internet in a positive way and hope that makes a difference.
You can have a look at some communities that often have content where science intersects politics:
https://mander.xyz/c/academia https://mander.xyz/c/earthscience https://mander.xyz/c/publichealth
Minimizing politics does not strictly mean being extreme about enforcing the no-politics rule. Posts that are about the interaction between politics and science generally contain enough overlap with science that it is acceptable. But that is not the case in this community, it is mostly general topics and politics.
This is an unsustainable moderation policy and philosophy for a community ostensibly about promoting science and scientific discussion.
If anything a hazy acceptance of sommeeeee political content is worse than an attempt at not allowing any at all, which is also not a sustainable moderation policy for a community centered on science.
I don’t think you understand, you either fight this head on or you accept that you have lost and science will continue to be dismantled globally and you seem to be stuck in the middle thinking there is another option.
Sal is quite lenient, but you – and I have noticed you’re the main submitter to this community – flaunt your violation of the rules. We talk science politics all across this instance (academia, public health, even labrats has more politics than I’d like and I’m the only poster). The posts on this community are pure chest-beating tribal politics though.
I bet I could even get away with making a community on voting theory and explaining how the math of different voting systems and statistics all play together. I wouldn’t personally want to put the work into moderating such a community, but the scope of science stuff is extremely broad. Not even a token effort was made to fit the scope, so the community got removed. That’s perfectly fair.
What do you mean exactly by that?
What do you mean by “tribal”? Why are you using “tribal” in a derogatory fashion?
Do you think I am passionate about politics because I see this like sports teams and I am just really passionate about my team winning?
Pretty much, yeah.
It is difficult for me to comprehend loving science and betraying it by artificially blinding yourself to the reality that science is political and is under existential threat from coordinated, intentional actions by rightwing movements all over the world, but then again people betray the people and things they love all the time I guess.
My loyalty to science first is why I’m on this instance. It’s not hard to understand that social drama distracts from and often undermines science. Calling a politician stupid gets us no closer doing more science. It doesn’t help get us funding or logistics. It doesn’t have anything to do with the science itself. It might well be true, but it amounts to useless whining. It’s increased noise for people who are looking for technically interesting things.
Additionally, science being politicized is not a justification to further politicize science. When people push and pull science to one side or another it makes it harder to build the broad coalitions and broad consensus required to fund things and solve problems. The moment people start thinking in ists and isms they stop thinking about how to solve problems. At the end of the day, Ideologies are social constructs. They sorta exists, but they’ll always be less important the physical reality and practical mechanisms.