Why do some sites have politics sections anyway ? Who would come here for that ? Who would g to a movies & tv shows & comic book specific forums & theres a politics section ? There are an infinite number of places online where politics can be talked about. Not every place needs a politics section
For as long as I have been observing here then GBAtemp has been an open discussion platform, albeit with a focus on GBA and later its successors before branching to general games (which were always discussed anyway -- the E3 sections, back when E3 mattered, were some of the most active parts of the site).
Some places operate under the "don't discussion religion or politics" notion, which can keep things on topic and avoids issues with people getting overly excited about said politics and religion (and some people do get very invested in it, such that any attack on it is considered a personal attack on them and their way of life and thus overreaction which serves nobody well. Sadly intellect is also no great predictor of how well you can handle such things either.). However you then have to curate the other way and go on the hunt for anything political, or anything political not overtly tied to your site mission (some politicos trying a ban on sugar is not really relevant to say a DVD ripping forum, but politicos making moves that will trouble your decryption tools are a different matter).
A useful halfway house then being make a section for it, and actively put things there that fall (not stopping people from speaking, thread is right there for anybody to engage with vs locking and deleting). Anybody that wants to engage with it can do so, anybody that either does not want to go for it can ignore it (possibly even actively -- click customise this page on
https://gbatemp.net/new/ to blacklist or whitelist things according to your whims) and be reasonably sure it is not going to crop up elsewhere.
Some ponder whether the nature of things changed -- "everything is political" used to be a ridiculous statement but some do seem to live it these days. You also have those that seem to think nobody should ever be offended ever, though recent times have seen people adopt the phrase "feel unsafe" instead, which is remarkably hard to enforce -- other than my nose I am basically impossible to offend, others not so much, "sticks and stones" tends to be how I roll but for others words are violence, hard to reconcile those philosophies.
I often quote Mentor's last words, something of the hacker mindset really.
Mentor's Last Words said:
Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"... Damn kids. They're all alike. But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him? I am a hacker, enter my world... Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... Damn underachiever. They're all alike. I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..." Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike. I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I'm a smart ass.. Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here... Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all... Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike... You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.
+++The Mentor+++
Compare that to the average terms of use (official and unwritten) of social meeja and tell me they are compatible.
The decision of the site running types then gets to be do we take on the political moderation burden or not, or to the degree necessary to just move things to a section. If it is all happy clappy then maybe you get some more users that can't handle the political discussions without getting all offended, or "feeling unsafe", and maybe banning it entirely avoids those that have the moth to the flame approach to such a section (even with active blocking). Will said lack of discussion mean other users leave or split focus if some site does appear that assumes people are rational adults that can handle a discussion? Similarly if you bias the rules towards political philosophy of the other when someone comes along and makes a site without that will those that dislike having to bite their tongue at something they find disagreeable jump ship? What if said users count among those that make up the bulk of your interesting content (if you were above 13, the legal minimum to join a lot of sites in the world, when the DS lite hit you are probably now in your 30s, GBA SP and definitely in your 30s. Said older types largely being responsible for your hacking, coding and such work).
Occasionally you also get a few laws that might trouble things (rare as free speech is largely a thing in the English speaking world), advertising types not wanting to work with you if there are certain words on your site, vendors not wanting to work with you (not exactly piracy unfriendly around here but places do seem to send game codes and hardware to look at), blacklisting/downgrading in search engines (if nobody comes).