This bot now runs an auto-moderation feature to filter posts and comments to protect against spammers. We are still working on good filter-rules for it though.

Good bot

I’m potentially interested. I already mod !treehuggers@slrpnk.net but it’s small and not very controversial so moderation needs are quite low.

What kind of time commitment are you envisioning?

I get why you created the community and agree having a space for those discussions is important. I think maybe the name and narrow focus kind of encourage it to be a space that will attract a lot of negative attention.

Do you think a space focused on encouraging other direct actions could serve a similar purpose while avoiding some of the inherent antagonism of its current form? Maybe something like “beyondvoting” or “directaction”. Then even people who do vote are encouraged to go beyond 4 year single day actions. It opens the space for dicussing the limitations of american democracy while still looking beyond it at what else people can do.

I’m personally very pro-voting as I see the argument that it’s a distraction from more important things kinda silly given how little time and effort it takes to cast a vote. That being said, I don’t mind discussion about not voting, though dedicating an entire community to the stance seems a bit much, and I’m not really sure what the intent is for such a thing.

Having a community to discuss how electoral politics relates to anarchism or solarpunk ideals however does seem nice to have, and I can see you moderating it and expressing your opinion there, so long as the opposite opinion is allowed to be freely expressed and civil discussion is allowed to be had.

Edit: I’ll add that I think making a notvoting community would inevitably lead to a provoting community being created and there being a rivalry between the two. I also think that will be bad for the instance, as we should be focusing on finding common ground rather than digging our heels in on very principled positions and fighting over petty differences.

I find it dangerous to allow the existence of a not-voting community to continue because there is already such tragically low voter turnout that actual progressive local leaders who could affect change at the community level don’t get elected, but right-wingers with rabid fanbases do.

We need to be encouraging people to get involved with local politics and voting in every election so that the government can actually function the way we would like to see it, and have them hold big businesses accountable. The way to do this is by supporting people-powered candidates who don’t take donations from PACs and corporate donors. Grassroots organizing includes electing people-first candidates to positions where they can represent the grassroots.

Make no mistake, I also would like to see the dissolution of the state. A classless, stateless society is possible, but must be achieved by transforming the evil into something that works for all, then its necesity fades away as the infrastructure has been put in place. Unfortunately we are still in a phase in which we need the state, but we will eventually get to the point where we don’t. For now, we need to vote to make it work.

I’m used to finding that when someone tries to convince leftists that voting is pointless they turn out to have a post history full of awful stuff, so there’s a kind of instinctive distrust when I see it here. I know you are all acting in good faith and I’m here to learn so after one of the first anti-voting threads on anarchism I’ve kept quiet and watched to see what I’m missing. I don’t want to brigade a community I’m pretty clearly not part of. There’s a lot of anarchism that appeals to me, and I don’t disagree with a recent argument that choosing between one genocide and two is a crappy choice. But I also can’t shake the thought that one genocide is less than two. And if a vote is all it takes to make such a huge difference (for the second group), I can take the time. It won’t be my only action that year. Maybe I’m not fully compatible with anarchism - I’m not a great fit for most systems I guess, but I’m happy to work with pretty much anyone when it comes to human rights and ecological stuff. I also think I agree with Povoq and the others, we may learn important lessons from actively moderating a contentious space like this.

I would like to know how you feel about the !notvoting@slrpnk.net community and if you think it has a place on slrpnk.net.

Well if you’re looking for opinions, I don’t think it has a place. It’s your right to refuse to participate in elections but creating a community devoted to the fact that you’re not going to do something seems like a poor use of time and energy that could be put toward something constructive. However, blocking communities I don’t want to see is easy enough, so have at it, I guess.

I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it

Similar sentiment here. I don’t think voting is a waste of time. It’s easy to do and does make real changes, for better or worse. In my case, lately, it’s worse, as we have an asshat in charge.

Anyway, I am mostly curious about why ‘you’ would feel that by not voting you’re pushing grassroots change (or something like that that’s said in the main post).

It seems to me it’s akin to going in a hunger strike to protest that you’re not being fed.

I willingly admit I don’t know the first thing about anarchism in general, but I am legitimately curious in the vein of I’ve found a weird bug and now I’m wanting to poke it with a stick.

I don’t see why it wouldn’t fit here. There’s significant overlap between anarchism and solarpunk. Maybe there’s some other leftwing instance where this community would also fit (or maybe better), but that doesn’t matter that much due to the federated character. All this regardless of what my stance on voting is btw.

I’m neutral on there being a community for it really. But then I’m someone with a US citizenship who hasn’t voted in around 5 years because I’m not living in the US anymore, and that upgrades voting for a lesser of two evils from “minorly depressing annoyance” to “majorly depressing and confusing hassle”

I’ve also been kicked from communities of US citizens living elsewhere for saying I’m not inspired to vote despite the difficulty because I didn’t think it would cause a meaningful difference who won (this would be… circa 2020 elections I believe).

I’ve since grown beyond this sentiment for various reasons. But I probably would have grown faster if I was able to voice my concerns about voting in the current system without feeling like I was a heretic.

Tbh, after typing and thinking a bit, I WANT this community here for the same reason I think groups like doomers should be welcomed here. We can’t have the productive discussions that lead to understanding and change if we exclude people who would otherwise be willing to talk and work with us. And yeah, maybe a set space legitimises not voting. But I don’t think that’s a really huge concern honestly.

I think this community could be a vibrant and interesting place.

I have some sympathy for the opinion of those who advocate not voting. Specifically, the idea I saw expressed several decades ago in Saskatoon: Don’t vote, it only encourages them!

More concretely, I’m interested in how we can move toward systems in which voting feels neither futile nor absolutely necessary. We should be able to feel that our vote has meaning, that our decision to abstain has meaning, and that, whether we choose to vote or not, there are ways other than voting to get results.

Being from Canada, where we have more than 2 parties, I’m especially interested in voting strategies and tactics that can at least somewhat undermine the effects of particular voting systems.

Hi, I’m brand new here and just wanted to say I joined this instance partly because I saw this in the communities list. I don’t know how much I’ll participate in !notvoting myself, but the fact that it’s allowed to be here tells me this is a relatively safe harbor for anarchists and others with unpopular-but-not-malicious views. That kind of discussion is a big part of what I’m here for! I’m also over on Mastodon at kolektiva.social, and we’ve had similar problems recently with people trying to hound that whole instance out of the fediverse (by pressuring other to defederate en masse) largely over the same issue. I don’t have much to say about how to handle this from a moderation standpoint - obviously such a widely hated view is going to attract more than its fair share of venom - but I’m just glad the discussion of it is apparently more or less welcome here.

I subbed, but I’m interested in how well my own views fit on the muni. I’m pro-voting but also pro-abstention, up to and including submitting a blank ballot or ballot with only write-in and protest votes. I think my firm stance against lesser-evil mentality gives me enough common ground to stand on but I don’t want to be disruptive to those who need a discussion space away from the pro-voting civic propaganda present in contemporary society.

Obviously I’ll do my good faith best to avoid pushing an agenda outside the remit of the community, but I don’t always check which muni puts an article into my feed. If it’s going to be a problem for the core user base, it might be better that I unsub right now.