Politics, Religion, Social Issues Forum Closed (July 2021)

[zakarhino]

Looking ahead to more positive vibes and happenings here on MR as the year progresses. This is the best tech site on the web., in my opinion.

Yes, there's a reason this is the only forum on the web I actually bother engaging in. Also there's a reason MacRumors is one of the only sites I visit daily.

 

[John-F]

I've been a shareholder in Twitter for a while. There have been attempts to duplicate what they have and to run forums in general that serve a very diverse plethora of viewpoints. And they manage to do it and do it well. What I've come around to is that what they do is very, very hard and, if it were easy, they'd have more competition.

I would put Facebook into the same category but I don't use Facebook so I don't know what it's like.

I don't use Twitter or Facebook too much, but based on people who have been censored on either, I believe the notion of diversity is more a myth than a reality. Not just conservative vs liberal, but, for example, posts from recognized medical experts has been censored if they disagreed with the WHO.

But to your general point, I think forums with diverse viewpoints can work, but they require good chemistry among members and between members and moderators. Not easy.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I understand the sentiments from those who miss the forum. I think it is possible that many people forget or may not really realize that MacRumors is a real tech based business. It is Arn's tech based business. It helps keep a roof over his family and food on the table, as well as employing several people. As such, he has to do his best to protect the integrity of the business as well as the reputation of the business. Trying to keep everything in line while preserving integrity and reputation is not easy at all. It can take years to build and only a moment to lose.

 

[zakarhino]

I've said this before but I'll echo my wants here again:

There needs to be a section of the forum that allows us to talk about the important intersection of politics and technology. I think that topic is highly relevant to what the site is about (technology). Announcing the forum will no longer allow "social issues" to be talked about is too big of a spread and requires clarification. So many opinions on technology are tied to one's political, social, and cultural viewpoints. If I talk about wanting more comprehensive encryption technology from iCloud is that a political/social statement that I can no longer make? The topic of encryption and tech privacy rights are intertwined with many topics on the forum.

PRSI was too broad for its own good in that most of the threads were centered around inherently controversial topics such as racism, trans rights, etc. and that's where seemingly most of the heated threads were that were taking up moderation time. On the other hand there were plenty of threads about the economy or about tech-oriented legislation that were very interesting to read and had almost 0 flaming in the replies. I don't have any data about MacRumors moderation but surely those threads weren't too difficult to manage, no? For example: I forgot his username but the guy with the wall street bull avi always had a few threads he would maintain about interesting topics like the global economy, I'll miss those lol.

 

[zakarhino]

Would it be too much to ask if we can keep PRSI around in read-only mode for a week or two? I'd like to maybe go back and look at a couple of interesting threads

 

[decafjava]

Would it be too much to ask if we can keep PRSI around in read-only mode for a week or two? I'd like to maybe go back and look at a couple of interesting threads

Yes there were some excellent threads there - kinds of sorry it went but I understand why.

 

[jav6454]

While I'm not terribly surprised at this news - I've thought it inevitable ever since PRSI was closed to new members earlier in the year - I will say that I am sorry that PRSI is now permanently shut.

In common with many others, initially, I joined this site because I had bought an Apple computer - in the process, "switching" from the Windows world - and had questions I wished to ask about it, but I stayed because the forum was interesting, instructive, and informative about not just the tech world, but about US socio-economic and cultural and political attitudes.

In a way, it is a pity that political discussion and debate have become so polarised on this forum, but that, I suspect, is merely and mostly a reflection of the wider world. But, I regret that it is now closed.

I am not sorry it has shut down. I seldom used it and at best, the forum was a nest for highly disagreeable, ill-tempered, bait-oriented, vile, foul and distasteful posting.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Good idea, let us pay, but give us more freedom (from moderation) if we want to talk politics at MRs.

But you can also start your own blog and let people do whatever they want to. At some point, it's anarchy, and all you have left is a bunch of whiny babies flinging their feces at each other. It keeps them off the street I guess, but it's not a productive place with much of a future. The aviation site I mentioned has frightened away almost all of the real pilots, and people in the aviation business. There are some good people still there, but it's a heck of a headwind... I quit it for a couple months, and when I tripped back for a particularly great post. I was welcomed back by a few 'old timers', and then dumped on by the infants.

 

[pshufd]

But you can also start your own blog and let people do whatever they want to. At some point, it's anarchy, and all you have left is a bunch of whiny babies flinging their feces at each other. It keeps them off the street I guess, but it's not a productive place with much of a future. The aviation site I mentioned has frightened away almost all of the real pilots, and people in the aviation business. There are some good people still there, but it's a heck of a headwind... I quit it for a couple months, and when I tripped back for a particularly great post. I was welcomed back by a few 'old timers', and then dumped on by the infants.

My idea: require your real name and identity.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

My last comment (probably).

I'm so tired of politics. I'm so tired of being judged. I was so tired of arguing (they called it 'talking') with family members, I have ghosted them. (Yeah, now I know what I did, and it was purely self preservation, believe me)

Hate, judgement, shunning, DOXing, harassment, stalking, drunk 2am calls from my brother.

People waste so much time trying to prove that someone is wrong, and that they aren't wrong. Unfortunately the pandemic just dumped a metric ton if new angst and insanity onto the pile.

I'm embarrassed that I did try to communicate with some posters in that category, and it was usually as productive as 'talking' to family. I'm just lost how to deal with it, and feel it's not going to end well, but it's just not worth it. This is a Mac and Apple site. If you want politics, one I was on a decade ago is 'smirkingchimp'. I was a member there for the articles.

Life will go on. Seriously. I dropped Facebook, and everyone I knew from there were concerned for my sanity, and mental health. HAH! I feel so much better having dumped all that drama. And the problem with politics online is you never know if the person you see comments from even believes what they are posting.

Relax, and be happy. Think of all the time we will have now to complain that our AirTags haven't updated yet... (Yeah, mine still haven't)

This has been a great website to be involved in. I've saved hours trying to fix issues I've had, and enjoy the many extracurricular threads. I hope politics will become less toxic in the future. Hmm... One can hope...

 

[ericgtr12]

My idea: require your real name and identity.

This is very true IMO, one of the comforts of the internet is that we can say all we want anonymously but when it comes to attaching your true identity to it that's an entirely different thing. For example, I have worked with people for years who have zero idea of my politics and vice versa, we all get along just great. Another good example of this is LinkedIn, you'll often see civilized debate as a result of all your professional friends being able to read it all.

 

[LumbermanSVO]

Like someone else said, this is the only forum I've found that required you to source your claims, and I believe it is a big reason why PRSI was one of the most tame political forums I've found. I've tried to get the same rule implemented in other forums and can't get any buy-in, it's a shame.

 

[Khalanad75]

Hey, I made it all these years without getting suspended or banned. A few minor warnings for sure, but never banned.

Wonder what thread was the straw. Some newer ones were getting out of hand. Guess I should change my Signature and Avatar now.

Same here. A couple of warnings but that was it.

will say that I am ultimately sorry, but fully understand why they are closing it down.

 

[B S Magnet]

Do we really expect to eliminate talk about politics when it comes to technology, even as technology sits at the intersection of big dynamic social forces?

The Political News section is a nexus where technology intersects with politics.

PRSI frequently featured posted topics and discussions which bore no relationship to this nexus. There was no place where a subject like “Biden’s trans athlete order” fell into this nexus. It was a place where people who started and entered discussions with their structural privileges as their base line would post largely unchecked, remarkably judgemental takes without any expectation that those parties/populations they were casually judging might hear and then hold their remarks (many of which completely lacked cited support) to task.

As technology and politics intersect, discussions to “debate” gender and sexual minorities or racialized populations had no place in the mix.

It was a disappointment to always see tech articles that relate to the LGBTQ community relegated to the PRSI forum. As a gay person whose life has been politicized for as long as I can remember, it wears on you. For once I would like to see an article posted that relates to my community that just gets to be an article, without preemptively tagging it as political (aka controversial).

Granted, not everything in the PRSI forum was about LGBTQ folks, and I recognize a lot of people enjoyed that forum. And maybe I'll miss it more than I think I will. But at the end of the day, I hope you'll continue to share Apple news as it relates to the LGBTQ community and trust forum members to be adults in the comments.

This is real. This is also why I’ve written before (and again, now) about how I’m tired. The fatigue aches in your bones. For more than the last thirty years of my life, I’ve watched random people — literal strangers with no stake in the welfare of my life — try to litigate and “debate” with deliberately dubious language, like “balancing rights” and “objective viewpoint” (as if announcing dispassion wills it into being). This becomes a near-constant onslaught, a persistent siege. And just when one area of, say, my being gay or my being trans or another marginalized component of my life loses traction as a weaponized lightning rod, the goalposts move, the threat changes its name, and the cycle of siege repeats anew.

I share your exhaustion. Stuff got old way back at the start.

 

[pshufd]

I actually went looking today to discuss Lambda and I don't have a place to discuss it now. I guess I'll look at the other forums here to see if it's being discussed.

 

[JayMysterio]

Like someone else said, this is the only forum I've found that required you to source your claims, and I believe it is a big reason why PRSI was one of the most tame political forums I've found. I've tried to get the same rule implemented in other forums and can't get any buy-in, it's a shame.

THIS ⬆️heartily!!

I always found it interesting that the section of the site that has guidelines & rules for discussion that other areas seemingly don't, was always the one with issues.

 

[LizKat]

My idea: require your real name and identity.

In my humble opinion, that hasn't stopped a truckload of posters on places like the WSJ and FT from posting as if they weren't even raised in a barn... even a really really nice barn with automated gutter scrapers instead of child labor shoveling out the manure.

Maybe it all comes down to motive. Does one mean to debate ideas or to troll? To kill time at work by swinging into some forum and dropping a few near or actual insults? Or to try to find out what makes someone believe this or that? To share experience? Or to dismiss that with "hah! anecdotal!" and obfuscate a valid point with a raft of dubious citations to the contrary?

It's been said that it takes all kinds to make the world go around. Maybe so. Probably more of us could have used the ignore feature on PRSI, but that does complicate the sense of a lot of threads, plus the trolls kept getting more practiced in how to engage people and draw them in to where an innocuous post could likely be reported for something or other, like "bickering" maybe. Politics itself may be a blood sport in the Beltway or equivalent abroad, but I had not figured hanging out in PRSI would become something quite so much like that.

After awhile my own response was just to quit dropping by very often. I would no more invite some of the people who were turning up there into my home than I would accept their own similar invitation. I'm talking about meanness, unkindness, malice. Those forums and the personae encountered seemed real enough to me that I eventually applied precisely that standard of whether I'd let some of them cross my own home's threshold, and the answer was increasingly no, and so I just bailed. And yes, it's not just PRSI where the malicious ones hang out!

 

[pshufd]

In my humble opinion, that hasn't stopped a truckload of posters on places like the WSJ and FT from posting as if they weren't even raised in a barn... even a really really nice barn with automated gutter scrapers instead of child labor shoveling out the manure.

Maybe it all comes down to motive. Does one mean to debate ideas or to troll? To kill time at work by swinging into some forum and dropping a few near or actual insults? Or to try to find out what makes someone believe this or that? To share experience? Or to dismiss that with "hah! anecdotal!" and obfuscate a valid point with a raft of dubious citations to the contrary?

It's been said that it takes all kinds to make the world go around. Maybe so. Probably more of us could have used the ignore feature on PRSI, but that does complicate the sense of a lot of threads, plus the trolls kept getting more practiced in how to engage people and draw them in to where an innocuous post could likely be reported for something or other, like "bickering" maybe. Politics itself may be a blood sport in the Beltway or equivalent abroad, but I had not figured hanging out in PRSI would become something quite so much like that.

After awhile my own response was just to quit dropping by very often. I would no more invite some of the people who were turning up there into my home than I would accept their own similar invitation. I'm talking about meanness, unkindness, malice. Those forums and the personae encountered seemed real enough to me that I eventually applied precisely that standard of whether I'd let some of them cross my own home's threshold, and the answer was increasingly no, and so I just bailed. And yes, it's not just PRSI where the malicious ones hang out!

They require that you be a subscriber and post your name but there are over a dozen people with my name in the United States. If your name is John Smith, that shows up as the poster.

 

[ericgtr12]

THIS ⬆️heartily!!

I always found it interesting that the section of the site that has guidelines & rules for discussion that other areas seemingly don't, was always the one with issues.

IMO this rule is far too ambiguous and subjective, it was rarely applied evenly and seems like is used more to "get 'em" than actually provide substantive debate. Is the best use of an unpaid mods time fact checking someone's claims, especially when it's mostly based on emotion?

That said, they need to address ignored users. As it stands a moderator has no way to know whether the person who is requesting a source is on the other users' ignore list. Just a friendly recommendation for @arn for a solution here, this mod will allow staff to see who is on a users ignore list so they will know ahead of time if this comes up.

 

[Falhófnir]

I actually went looking today to discuss Lambda and I don't have a place to discuss it now. I guess I'll look at the other forums here to see if it's being discussed.

Coronavirus (Covid-19) informational thread

From the MacRumors administrators: For some helpful links, please see the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Information announcement. For humorous posts, see the Coronavirus Humor thread. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am opening this thread with...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[turbineseaplane]

I don't know why people are surprised that politics spills over into other things.

Politics, in the modern world, is an inexorable part of life.

Whether one engages with it or not, it impacts everything you do and touches your life whether one likes it or not.
Ignoring it doesn't remove it's impact on all of us.

Not talking about it explicitly doesn't remove it's role in nearly everything at some level.

 

[turbineseaplane]

With all due respect, I think this is a mistake. PRSI was a worthwhile forum that required moderation and pruning. And, I suspect that getting rid of PRSI just means that other sections will become politicized.

Do we really expect to eliminate talk about politics when it comes to technology, even as technology sits at the intersection of big dynamic social forces? Good luck with that.

Bingo ^^^

It's a game of whack a mole that can never be won via moderation by elimination.
Politics and all the implications of it have impacts in every category of modern life -- especially in Tech.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Politics is just the "P" in PRSI

We also lost Religion and Social Issues in the great MacRumors forum purge of 2021

 

[TonyC28]

Like many others here, I'll miss PRSI or rather the memory of past iterations of it. It's what had often led me in past years to check in and then cruise around for updates in other community threads I liked to follow.

More recently though, seeing other long term members losing their PRSI privileges, I became so wary of losing my own privileges that I found myself including parenthetical notices even in some non-PRSI posts, to the effect that I was not meaning to politicize those other threads, e.g. in commenting on some book I had read and found interesting.

In short I had gone beyond self-editing and had begun to self-censor in ways I didn't like, solely to avoid being booted out of PRSI, so I had drifted away. Hope I live long enough to see a more usefully vibrant PRSI revived again some day, as I will miss its better moments... of which there were actually many over the years during which I've been a forum member.

Meanwhile of course I'll be lurking to know when I've held onto some piece of gear too long or should wait another cycle before at least window-shopping through Apple's latest offerings.

You and I didn’t agree often but I always respected your very well-written posts. Maybe a little lengthy but always intelligent. I got myself spanked enough times to get banned but I can’t imagine you getting in that kind of trouble.

 

[Populism]

THIS ⬆️heartily!!

I always found it interesting that the section of the site that has guidelines & rules for discussion that other areas seemingly don't, was always the one with issues.

Yes! Twitter-sourced claims FOR THE WIN.