Proposal: Add Political topics section to PG Discourse and code of conduct

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Hello everyone :wave:

So I am relatively new to Privacy Guides but I must say I just love the community in that we have such a hodgepodge of cultures, political views, and a lot of people who care deeply about humans and human rights as that is kind of the core ethos of privacy. There’s been some very recent stirrings in the Off Topic channels covering more political topics, especially due to the upcoming changeover executive administration in the US.

What

During those conversations I noticed some varied opinions with some in the community who want to avoid the conversation of politics altogether, others who seem to prefer more liberal usage of political discussions as privacy and threat models are never practiced in a bubble. I think there’s a happy medium to be found here, and I really see a lot of potential based on the specific topic and community ethos I mentioned above.

According to our current Code of Conduct there’s not much to clarify if political discussion or opinions are acceptable and what are the specific guard rails or considerations when discussing varied opinions.

Any other conduct which would reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting.

Which in my opinion, could lean more towards avoiding political discussions as most corporate policy is to avoid it.

Why?

I believe it’s an issue that there’s becoming fewer and fewer watering holes that accept political, governance, and economic types of discussion because, it’s frankly difficult to moderate and most other people just prefer to avoid it altogether. It’s convenient to feel like there’s a nice bubble separating communities from the harsh systems we live in and to just focus on tech or other related topics that people join for.

But having these conversations are incredibly important due to state segregation through identity politics and promoting less tolerance and more fear. Outside of this becoming a reactionary community that provides a much needed resource for folks to understand privacy, I think its equally important for this community to adopt a participatory discussion group that allows for interdisciplinary and personal experiences around the overlap of politics and privacy.

Some expanded validation as to why we should do this provided you still don’t think this is valuable:

TL;DR: I think it would be beneficial to create a specific tag used to mark political discussions and add clarity to the code of conduct around these discussions. It could make sense to add a topic post around best practices and call out examples of good faith discussions.

Ideas to get things started

These guides that show how to cite claims and a predefined non aggressive signal (link emoji or standard reply) or [needs citation] to remind anyone sharing factual information to cite it.

Make claims assuming your own fallibility. Err towards descriptive and uncertain language (even if you’re very certain) and try to avoid prescriptive, dismissive, argumentative, or otherwise offensive language.

Don’t claim something is fact unless it is objective (i.e. based on a physical and reproducible observations that you provide a citation for). Subjective or inter-subjective information that has no physical evidence should be made clear that it is an opinion you hold without need to justify it.

Freedom to declare ones opinion with psychological safety and without fear of retaliation.

Remember, we are all subject to a vast amount of propaganda that tells us others are dangerous and to silence them even saying their opinion as enabling their voice will grow oppression over you or someone you care about. We were all born children with a relatively blank slate, and depending on upbringing and messaging we’ve known that has been passed down and reinforced over centuries produce bad takes. Aim to find the reason they have arrived at that conclusion versus telling them it’s wrong.

Have the humility to be wrong and also acknowledge that two things can be varying degrees of truth.

Make the goal shared knowledge and an exercise in trust, vulnerability, and respect.

Similar to reserving the right to withhold information, nobody should be forced to share any of their political positions.

Fin

As this community grows outside of its technical foundation, I think many people will generally see the topic of privacy intermingled with political and economical overlap and it will be much better to have a practiced community that already shares norms about discussing this type of topic without stirring a large exodus and in fact learning how to bridge gaps that enable a lot of the fragmentation of our society.

I’d like to open this up to comments or suggestions around ideas for providing open and good-faith conversations. There are plenty of things to discuss but I think this is enough to either get the ball rolling or determine this is not the way we should go.

CC: @jonah @dngray @ph00lt0 @Olivia @Niek-de-Wilde

Thanks for reading!

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There is also the FAQ - Privacy Guides Community which applies to this forum more specifically. I think the FAQ puts it best:

These are not hard and fast rules. They are guidelines to aid the human judgment of our community and keep this a kind, friendly place for civilized public discourse.

With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.

As long as everyone agrees to be civil and to engage in good faith, as the vast majority of members here do, then the current system works exceptionally well.

The scope of the forum is pretty clearly privacy and security, so political issues that are related to those topics are likely to be completely on-topic (e.g. Chat Control). I believe the existing rules are already perfectly clear on this and that as long as everyone is respectful, minor issues like off-topic posts can be removed without any drama. Rigid rules which try to address specific scenarios are ineffective and an unnecessary burden on users and moderators alike.

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I still don’t really understand why you want to integrate something inherently controversial to a forum primarily about privacy preserving software recs.

There are plenty of other places to have these conversations, I do not think this is one of them.

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Okay I do agree with all of that in regards to leaving changes out of the code of conduct.

Updated proposal might be to use the rest of this post to make a less formal set of community contributed guidelines that we could point to when things get heated.

I do still think having a tag would make it clearer when you’re entering political territory like a trigger warning which could link to the informal guide.

My intent was not rigid rules but clearly written guidelines outlining approaches that facilitate a good discussion for the many who may have some wiggle room in their conduct and can see we as a community want valuable discussions even in this area of off topic.

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Not sure what else to say other than repeat what I’ve said in my why section above. I acknowledge and am all for people who prefer compartmentalization. I am just not that kind of person unless I have to be for safety and autonomy.

I am the kind of person who doesn’t want to fling triggering off topic conversations to folks like you who are just here for the privacy recs. I get it. Thats why I would want to have a tag dedicated to these conversations that I see as quite relevant yet triggering for some.

Perhaps we even make the default where that tag is filtered and you have to unfilter it to see the stuff.

My whys are my whys and I doubt I can nor do I want to convince you that this proposal is the right answer. Forums like these should be majority rule as we all have the luxury to vote with our feet. I believe a lot of valuable applications of privacy is to protect from state actors and a lot of laws need to be discussed and I have opinions om these actors and laws that I’d like to discuss with people here who consent to that discussion.

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I think that we can and should talk about state action, government action, surveillance, laws, etc. All of which are appropriate imo to the whole point of this community. They’re also very much separate from politics and can be discussed, debated, opined on without getting into the politics of it. Id argue that’s a huge waste of time but to each their own.

The problem is nobody is going to take the word of an internet stranger over their lived experiences and concrete political beliefs. Forums are a bit better at this than say twitter, but i have little faith it would not simply devolve into flame wars, rage baiting, etc.

At the moment every topic on here has at least a few bits of high quality information about something. Clogging it up with political content isn’t something I want at all.

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Yeah, but my thought is why not make an accessible lane to direct folks to when topics inevitably veer off of the privacy tracks as we saw with some recent concerns.

There will always be folks who don’t handle topics like this well after 10+ years of Twitter Facebook conditioning. At least here the idea could be that you have just enough reputation to lose that keeps you from making that ad hominum attack. And if enough folks in the community rehearse the argue in good faith, that will ideally come across over time (hence why i think having community discussions about things to keep in mind when discussing these topics).

I don’t think social media is the spot for it, even Mastodon feels conditioned for contraversy.

But I do understand your concerns here. I am also considering creating a communuty that literally aims to just practices discussing oppossing views in a civil way and like get our heads together about designing platforms that incentivize civil debate.

But seeing the political topics recently just felt like it could make sense here too so thats the proposal. :slight_smile:

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I don’t think any changes are necessary. Political discussions are allowed and always have been, because privacy is a political topic.

What makes people upset isn’t “political topics” themselves, but people soapboxing about American politics. This is the kind of behavior that isn’t really allowed, because it’s unnecessary and irrelevant generally.

Luckily this behavior has historically been pretty self-correcting. People try and bring their own opinions about American partisan politics here, and get rejected by the community for it. Then they often choose to leave :man_shrugging:

Outside of the occasional blip I don’t think we really have any major problems with this, and people can be trusted to keep their political postings related to privacy and security.

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Typically on a big rise there is a knee jerk reaction to correct it. This has happened in the past here as well.

If the issue becomes persistent, or the size of the active forum drastically grows, then I’d agree a sectioned off area might be better. However, at this side, I’d rather argue that more heavier handed moderation in threads running into abandonment is likely good enough for the foreseeable future. That also enforces the rule of keeping the peace across all threads, which I find more important than carving out a place that ends up being more toxic by category.

All threads and topics should be held to a high standard of civility. People insulting one another, making blanking assertions, and spreading FUD and hatred, all do not belong in any thread on any category on the forum.

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One of the reasons that this is one of the very few forums I’m active in, is because of the lack of politics. I prefer it that way.

The problem with political discussions is that they take over any platform that they are tolerated on, and I don’t want to see that here.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that this is an international forum, there are people here from many different countries (including me), so talking about the politics of a single country is just irrelevant for many forum visitors, but privacy as a subject is relevant for people all over the globe.

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I agree that discussing one countries politics is lame. You say politics is not brought up but it is brought up. That’s why I considered making a special lane to enable those discussions but avoid having it take over the other areas of the forum. Making it quite normal to call out topics and conversations that make a turn in that direction towards that lane.

Based on the feedback I’ve received here it seems like there’s not much concern around the politics brought up if it’s on topic and discussed in good faith. I think it will come up more and more as the concepts are related and humans are humans. But maybe the current way will continue working too! Well see!

Thanks all for hearing me out.

Go PG community!

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Given legislative decisions (which are inherently political) can have privacy implications, perhaps we could categories posts that are Country or even region specific (the State of California seems to be ahead in terms of privacy respecting legislation). Although PG is based in the U.S., I believe the crowd here is quite international.

I posted some relevant information on the Government of Canada’s own decisions relating to TikTok here.

Granted, someone pointed out the post might be better suited for another thread (and I don’t believe I’m able to move the post myself).

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I strongly oppose making a political section as it will mean that the common ground that privacy interested people have will become a source of conflict and it will inevitably lead to purges.

I am personally, very, very right wing and obviously tons of privacy people are very, very left wing. If we keep things focused directly on privacy, we can still benefit and have a healthy environment.

As long as there is discussion there will be the assumption that “at least we can all agree on X.” Trust me, we can’t. Sincere disagreements will become issues of “bad faith actors” and ultimately result in the redditification or 4chanification of the site. This compromises the ability to collaborate for high quality privacy information.

The only exception IMO should be for DIRECTLY privacy related law. For example, law regulating encryption, privacy tech like Monero, legal compliance of companies with privacy laws, etc. Not purges or FUD because a company endorses or donates to a political candidate or “OMG Nazis are using Signal!” This is only significant if it has a direct impact on the technology we are using.

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Yeah, I actually think this points out my greatest concern with doing something like this is that right wing privacy people are about as common as left wing body builders.

It’s annoying to me that media puts these archetypes that lead us to be minorities in cliques where we would otherwise be able to find so much common ground and have good faith discussions.

I’m actually would be very interested in having a discussion somewhere (likely it seems PG is not the place) but if you’d be up to chat directly via messenger, video, or potentially start a thread in the Matrix lounge room if we want others to join. Whatever provides the highest opportunity for people to feel openly discuss. I’d like to just brainstorm with someone on the right about how to build seperate communities that enable the people to find common ground and accept where they disagree and instead of thrusting it into a group like PG, create it with keeping mind all the ways this shit went wrong in the past and consider ways to resolve it.

I know this is wildly off topic to a meta thread, so oll stop here but please do feel comfortable to refuse and know I won’t take offense or be surprised.

Also for trust building, I’m Marxist left but grew up very conservative and served in the US military in Iraq. Experiences from there was the switch for me that moved me left. I heavily empathize with all points of view and believe its systemic change to help individuals cooperate not the individuals themselves. I strive not to judge or consider my way right and really just want to understand what matters to you when having political discussions online, and get some examples of bad faith discussions so we can begin with what not to do.

If you or anyone else that finds themselves on any fringe group left or right wants to help out I’d love to work on this side car space outside of PG to build another attempt at this.

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One of my favorite things about this forum is that its relatively free of any sort of political discussion. The fact last week’s thread wasn’t immediately locked was a huge oversight from the moderators. It was the first time I’ve seen political vitriol in the ~1.5 years I’ve been here.

I think in order for anything political to be posted or discussed here, it needs to directly have positive or negative privacy implications. As an example, lets say a UK politician proposed legislation to ban VPN. That is a political action with a direct impact on the privacy community. That post should be allowed. A political statement solely by someone prominent in the privacy community shouldn’t be the nexus to allow a political post. The post last week about the Proton CEO is a prime example of the type of post that wouldn’t be allowed, esspecially because the OP injected an inherently political opinion into the body of the post. Now, if that post was focused more on the implications of the CEOs endorsement and how Trump’s AG pick would impact the privacy community, then I would have been all for it.

The United States only comprises something like 4.5% of the world population. There is no reason to discuss US politics, or anything politics really, unless it has direct impacts on the privacy community, like the examples I mentioned above. Someone’s endorsement of a political appointee itself did not merit a topic. A discussion of that appointee’s stances on privacy related matters would’ve been better.

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Everything is political, especially privacy technology and software security work.

The very act of trying to protect a system (and therefore the system’s users) against adversaries is an inherently political decision.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to bring a country’s partisan politics into matters, but trying to pretend that the nature of privacy/security work doesn’t have an inherent politics to it is possibly a little naive. It also biases for the status quo, but that’s a different matter.

If anyone is interested in discussing this topic in detail, Queer Privacy is an excellent book to start with. The author also worked on Cwtch and has published a bunch of cryptography research (including electronic voting) and is just all-around cool.

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Privacy can be viewed in the lens of the political and the lens of the science/engineering. Then there is the pragmatic which looks at what is realistic to implement. Privacy Guides is a pragmatic site.

For example, the chemistry and physics that go into building a firearm that fires lethal projectiles is science and engineering and these disciplines are agnostic to your beliefs about guns. However, guns are obviously political.

The designs of guns themselves consider the political environment: illegal barrel lengths, magazine capacities, silencers, firing mechanisms, stocks, and so on are politically regulated, and therefore IN ORDER to be pragmatic, gun designs must be engineered around what is legal.

People have different beliefs about who should be able to own what and how they can be used (political opinions) and there are regulations about what is legal (political constraints).

If you had a PG-style site designed to help people arm themselves, to be useful, it needs something that can be actually put into practice, which implies political beliefs about gun ownership and an acceptance of the legal environment that regulates guns.

This information is capable of being abused (i.e. for a criminal to arm himself) but it is a necessary risk of providing accurate information. To use the word “abused” implies a common belief about what proper uses are, which we don’t have. There are some people who believe criminals should be armed, who believe that murder is good, etc. Political radicals of all stripes are the most likely to be deviated from the center the most strongly, but also have an above average incentive to be armed.

Now shift the analogy to privacy. There is a political environment that deals with data and transmission which we have to accept as political constraints: the Five Eyes program will monitor the internet, financial regulations will apply to cryptocurrency, governments can ban encryption, regulate the airwaves, and so on. We have to accept political constraints to have a useful site.

Similar to the gun analogy, the strongest incentives for privacy really are with those who have something to hide: child pornography, terrorist cells, etc. of which SOME PEOPLE believe is a good thing (political opinions) but most people (myself included) consider abuse.

My understanding of the vision of privacy guides is to be, essentially, a resource for people who want to arm themselves with privacy, without expressly endorsing any specific purpose. Much like a gun site would explain the merits of using a specific model of rifle for defense against individual people, soldiers in a battle space, dangerous wild animals, hunting different game, etc. PG would be a site with guides for how to privately operate a computer, a phone, etc. given goals and constraints.

I understand enough political theory to understand how most things ultimately end up in the political realm, but this doesn’t doom PG to be a site about political discussions. Politics ultimately boils down to a Friend-Enemy distinction, and so the natural result of the discussion of politics is to mobilize people into division and punishing enemies and rewarding friends.

This pattern routinely shows up in the software and tech world where people are purged based on their views on geopolitical conflicts, sexuality, American presidents, and other things that are basically irrelevant to the actual thing produced and that hinder collaboration. You want people to be able to write a bugfix that the whole community benefits from regardless of their views on controversial issues.

For a community that is politically minded, it is easy for EVERY detail to be political, but that is the result of a toxic community more than the natural problems. A podcast app’s decisions about what podcasts to suggest is political, but if we can all get along we can keep the majority of collaboration focused on making the app work well, rather than being in charge of the podcast recommendations. The FOSS community in my experience seems uniquely bad at allowing relatively personal beliefs to take center stage for the whole community in a way that doesn’t produce better products, but simply satisfies the psychological urges of select contributors and devolves into pettiness. I think PG should do their best to avoid this.

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I appreciate the analogy here to demonstrate the seperation of descriptive versus prescriptive objectives in the community. Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Defining in Lexicography | Merriam-Webster

I do agree theres more value in keeping politics out of communities with descriptive objectives like that of a dictionary that documents what is versus what should be.

That still leaves open a problem that there needs to be a proper place to have safe discussions on the internet. The common response is that people should leave politics to friends and family, but many people are isolated and the majority of their political discussions happen in one way discussions with social media influencers Youtubers (who became influential by playing to divisive material).

I disagree with this sentiment. Although politics have been degraded to mostly identity politics, in theory it is the art of governance which could include studying incentive structures that have self-correcting mechanisms to optimize the health, safety, and happiness of many while not leaning too heavily towards unchecked utilitarian ethics.

For instance, what if instead of identity politics which we kniw divides us, could we have a discussion around the pros and cons of decentralization and what steps could be mitigated to reach that?

Common people can understand local politics better than complicated national level politics and likely will feel more autonomy over decisions that influence their day to day lives. However, decentralization generally involves conflict and subjegation as we’ve seen in the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The incremental shift towards divide and rule has removed our ability to discuss these elements politics which I believe only the prolitariat will have incentive to do.

So then, I wonder if anyone has seen any successful internet community that has been able to reframe the goals of political discussion from arguments over observed media to having discussions that help people analyze theor beliefs through collaborative good faithed creation of a commons that captures views from all political angles. This kind of gets to building a [web of trust] (Web of trust - Wikipedia) would help with online organization where reputation is a large activity list of stuff you do online and friends you have. Identity isn’t limited to a platform you are on, but the collection of activity an identity is involved in.

Anyways, I am now convinced PG is not the place for deeper political dialogue beyond what is directly related to privacy. I do think finding these communities that seem to host good faith discussions and also practice privacy on their platform might be another consideration. This splits PG and political community governance bodies and keeps focus on privacy. Simultaneously if larger privacy conversations do come up, a mod could make the recommendation or cllse the thread with and suggest opening a thread with another community.

If it doesnt exist, we should make it.

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Along these lines I’d like this forum to not completely hide flagged posts.

There should be a button to temporarily unhide and view flagged posts, currently there is none.

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I agree, but we do not have that option. It would be handy if a plugin for Discourse enabling this functionality existed. Seems like very few others have requested this feature: