First, a bit of site administrivia out of the way – I enabled wordpress connect for commenting, though that will require creating a subscriber account on this site. I’ll set up a privacy policy at some point, but for right now, just rest assured I’ll only use whatever data I have to collect to maintain your account on the site. I’m not interested in doing anything nefarious. I’ll like other sites as I have time.
So I’ve been thinking a lot about “cancel culture”. This site is a little less susceptible to cancellation than most – it still has some choke points, but by removing my dependence on WordPress hosting and moving to a provider that has assured me that anything that is legal under US law is permitted, I’ve just removed one of them. There are several ways still in which I’m vulnerable, but I want to be able to say what I want without a mob descending and causing me crap. I’ve done okay at this, but mostly just by being small enough that no one cares.
But I have to think about this a bit more deeply for some of the other sites I’m creating. They have little to do with politics, but I’ve seen it happen before where people find out about what the person behind a site believes, and then go nuts. I saw a CEO get ousted just today for tweeting in support of an abortion bill. So this is a very real problem. It’s compounded by the fact that some of the communities I’m catering to tend to be a bit, well, woke, and I have to factor that into the equation as well. How to handle this? Well, however I handle this, I have to consider it now, because having this blow up in my face in a year isn’t an option.
I haven’t entirely decided, but I’m leaning towards just putting all my cards on the table and letting the chips fall where they may.
I am not a Republican, but I think it’s fair to say I’m a conservative, or at least I lean right. I consider myself center-right. I don’t really think highly of those who are too much farther right than me, but I am most definitely not left. My opinions on some pretty hot button issues might be considered controversial, if anyone cared to listen to them. So I’m leaning towards just letting that flag fly, but subtly. If someone wants to not frequent one of my sites because of my political views, well, that’s their choice, but I don’t think I want to make the pretense of being something I’m not just to avoid backlash down the road. It will reduce my immediate growth, but that growth would just be the people that would go away if they were going to try to cancel me down the road, so it is what it is.
I still need to think of the right way to approach that, because I still don’t want those sites to be overtly political, but I think the only way to be truly cancellation proof is to build against the possibility from the very beginning. Moving to self-hosted was a good start. Now it’s time to think about next steps.
And, I’ll be frank, I absolutely hate that this is something I even need to give any thought to whatsoever.