[boznz]

Moderating politics is not just hard, I would say its near impossible. I tend to hide anything that hints of politics from all my feeds, block users who are disrespectful, and reserve political banter for when I am walking with my friends, where we are all totally different on the spectrum, but remain civil.

[pbhjpbhj]

Cut off those using ad hominems. Fact check. All opinion should be labelled. Only one identity per person. Any associations or biases are public.

Do all that then I can't see what's hard about it ;oP.

Genuinely though, I think those things are doable. You probably have to have people use their own irl identities (at least the platform needs that information), which is problematic if you want free and open debate.

[edgyquant]

Fact checking is basically impossible as most things aren’t black and white and open to various interpretations. The idea of fact checkers online has been totally rejected because fact checkers themselves are vulnerable to bias and ideological capture.

[asddubs]

I'm honestly not even sure if civil political discourse is desirable in times of radical actions being taken by the government. I almost think that's worse than no political discourse.

e: To clarify my point, e.g. you can't calmly disagree with whether or not it's okay to shoot people in streets, that diminishes it as if it was just a slight disagreement

[freedomben]

What's the point in discourse if not to change the other person's mind? Triggering the limbic system of the person you are talking to is the fastest way to ensure they won't be able to engage with their PFC and actually hear and consider what you're saying. If the point is just to feel better about how righteous and right you are, then by all means proceed with your approach. But if the point is to influence somebody's views, then you are self-defeating in your approach.

Personally, I think federal officers have executed law abiding citizens. But if I start out by screaming "The Nazis have control of our government and are executing innocent people in the streets!" then not only have I closed my own mind to potential challenges to my views (which is at best hypocritical to expect the other person to be open-minded when I am not myself open-minded), then we get nowhere and just come away hating each other and thinking the other person is crazy. Worse, it poisons the well so the future reasonable person is immediately written off with guilt-by-association (person A was crazy and person B shares a view with them, therefore they must be crazy too).

[edgyquant]

This can be said generally at all times by someone. It’s not just a naive way of thinking it’s extremely dangerous and a real threat to republican society. You will never sway the center with aggressive and blatantly bias rhetoric.

[pydry]

Not in completely open communities, no.

It would be better to gatekeep political communities with precisely worded "principle" questions and then flag for violations of those for anybody who slipped in under the radar.

Even political communities where everyone is nominally on the same page do break down over issues of tone, disingenuous arguments, etc. though.