When You Turn Web Sites About Tech Into Political Sites
TechDirt is one example of this
Yesterday my wife joked that if I all of a sudden started writing about celebrities, then I'd be totally missing the point. It would make no sense. The same is true for politics*. Why would advocacy regarding a topic like privacy, for instance, frame the matter in terms like "privacy for leftists" and "privacy for conservatives" (or similar)? A lot of people fall into the trap of catering only for particular groups and we've been seeing more of that in recent years. Dealing with the topic in crude form, without trying to appeal to any particular side, would probably not "go viral" in social control media. But it would also not attract the same level of toxicity. We always say, focus on the issues and the companies, not the people or their race, gender etc.
We firmly believe that the "powers that be" partly and perhaps inadvertently exploit social control media to divide the population and use a growing sense of hostility (polarity) to discredit criticism of particular things, including mass surveillance. █
______
* The context does not exactly matter and we can no longer recall what triggered it. But a lot of sites that cover tech are unnecessarily interjecting politics into everything, potentially alienating people where no alienation is needed, it only limits exposure and acceptability.