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esskay

Not really a Japan exclusive thing, it's had massive growth recently.

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Did people stop having meltdown about politics?

When I installed few days ago every post was about politics it was suffocating.

I see virtually no politics. Maybe don't follow accounts which post about politics?

I didn't follow anybody.

It was all I saw after creating account (which was just after US election results). Maybe i should give it another try.

You see posts even without following anyone smh

Considering the world is on an insane trajectory, it's probably good politics is being discussed. If you can't handle reality, try blocking based on keywords to insulate yourself from it.

Discussing politics in an echo chamber - which is what BS has rather quickly devolved into - does not help in resolving the 'insane trajectory' the world is supposed to be on. To resolve that it should not just be discussed but also acted upon in the real world where everyone gets to have a say instead of just those who happen to follow the desired narrative. Such discussions tend to be contentious and often not at all 'nice' but that's what you get when discussing important issues in an open forum. In that respect X does a lot better than heavily polarised venues like BS ('left') or Gab ('right').

Of course X will only be better in this respect as long as there are some 'progressives' who refrain from following the herd to the next echo chamber. If all of them leave X will become another Gab.

Your compressed Overton window isn't doing you any favors. If all you see is "left" on bluesky, then you're operating on the terms that liberals and conservatives use, usually unconsciously, to further the interests of capital at their own expense.

If you look closer, you'll see that liberal != leftist, and both exist on BS, and not exclusively in echo chambers.

There's currently a shift or awakening happening where some liberals are actually self reflecting for a change, because they realize they're standing on false ground.

Also, you can see on the bluesky subreddit that many users are aware that they shouldn't be blindly trusting the curated user blocklists, if for no other reason that they're being curated dishonestly (surprise, surprise).

Old Twitter was always a steaming pile, and Musk didn't change that with X. Bluesky is actually innovative and refreshing. Time will tell how that holds up.

To me "liberal" has nothing to do with "left" since I'm not American and as such use the term in its original meaning. As to the width of the window of allow discourse I'll just say that as far as I'm concerned it is only limited to the law of the land no matter which terms - left/right/liberal/conservative/progressive/whatever - you want to use.

That wide window is not what I see on BS nor on Mastodon but it is starting to become visible on X. Such wide windows let in a lot of noise but that is part of deal.

> To me "liberal" has nothing to do with "left"

Then we do agree on something. Your previous message vaguely lumping all of the "left" together suggested otherwise.

Mastodon has always been mostly liberals in an echo chamber who fled from Twitter. Lemmy to a lesser extent via reddit's api fiasco, but that's a good example of the liberals and leftists siloing themselves on the same platform through ideological instances, resulting in echo chambers. The tech issues of those two still isn't ironed out, either.

Between needing an account to merely view posts and Musk's willingness for knee-jerk censorship, X is simply a non-starter in 2024.

Needing an account to view replies to posts is one of the (many) reasons why I only use X through a proxy. I've been running and using nitter for years, even when you could peruse twitter without needing an account and do not see any reason to stop doing so. That said X is the only platform where you'll regularly come across opinions different from your own no matter where you personally stand. On Mastodon (and on Pleroma instances which I have experimented with myself), on BS and on Lemmy (which I also experimented with) you'll either be welcomed as a comrade or shunned as a foe with not much in between. While BS theoretically could be a place where the whole GAL-TAN spectrum is represented it currently seems to harbour mostly those on the left two quadrants - left-liberal and left-authoritarian. Even if and when the other two quadrants become populated the blocklist feature will probably keep the separation in place for many if not most of the ideologues. It will be up to those around the centre to go light on the blocklists so they can interact with those on the other side of the X and Y axes.

The meat and potatoes is: does a person agree or disagree that capitalism is on a globally unsustainable path with no real vision for the future. Some people are willing to engage in this discussion, while others are not.

Suggesting elitist centrism as a solution is a joke.

Edit for clarification:

> In that respect X does a lot better than heavily polarised venues like BS ('left') or Gab ('right').

That's the context of our conversation's beginning. From that, you made it sound like it was a traditional "US"/modern EU style narrow window neoliberal debate between "liberals" and "conservatives". What I'm saying is this is narrow because both of those groups take capitalism as some fundamental law of nature that is to never be questioned, and if it is questioned, labeled as "tankie" and put in containment. The issue of to-capitalism or not-to-capitalism is a far broader one than what these normie platforms typically concern themselves with. Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds. We could preempt the bickering about Cheetos and rotating villains if real solutions were offered from the start.

Bluesky actually has instances of questioning this fundamental assumption.

Now you're falling in the same trap you earlier accused me of having been caught in: I am not talking about capitalism or 'elitist centrism' here and consider this focus on capitalism vs. some form of socialism to be a rather narrow view of the way the world can be organised. I am talking about how on a platform like BS which currently mostly hosts those on the 'left' side of the 'spectrum' (line, square, cube, hypercube - take your pick of the number of dimensions you want to measure a person's political affiliation in) but which may in some potential future in which it survives the current phase (which to me is doubtful but leave that aside) and starts attracting people on the 'other' side of the 'spectrum' can foster communications across ideological lines given that the platform offers a feature - curated blocklists - which enables users to be shielded from those who go against some desired narrative. It will be those clustered around the centre who are most likely to engage in real debate with people on the 'other' side while those further away from the centre are far more likely to only venture across the line to verbally shoot down their opponents in some way - by calling them names, by trolling them, etc.

Never seen any politics on there personally. It seems to respect your interests a bit better. Grab a few starterlists for subjects you're interested in and that should narrow it down and make it more tailored.

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