[fluoridation]

>When you try and cleave society into things that are and aren't political, what you are doing is creating a normative set of things that aren't allowed to be challenged, on the basis of your claim that they aren't political

What are you talking about? Whether something is allowed to be challenged has nothing to do with whether it's political. Actually, what even is not allowed to be challenged? I struggle to come up with a single example.

[tkel]

Yes, in communities that try to claim that certain things are "political" and certain things are "not political", "banning cryptocurrency" could be rejected on the basis that it is "political". The point is that saying something like "we don't do politics" is absurd. There is always an underlying politics, even if it has been normalized or obfuscated, repressed or unexamined. Reread my above comment.

[TobTobXX]

No, I think both, political and apolitical decisions can exist.

If you ban a project because its CI pipeline mines crypto and that ia a drain on your server, it is an apolitical argument.

If you ban a project because it drains recources because an AI agent is commutting multiple times a second, that is apolitical.

If you ban a project, because it hosts content that doesn't align with your ideals since it uses cryptocurrencies, that is clearly political.

Sure, there may be a small grey zone. But there are swaths of decicions that are clearly political/apolitical.

[inigyou]

Is the set of acceptable uses for shared infrastructure not a political question? What's different between mining crypto on a free CI server, letting my cows eat all the grass at the park, or dumping industrial waste into the river?

[iamnothere]

Most people distinguish practical questions from normative questions. Practical questions may have some small political component, but usually it’s not useful or constructive to consider them as political issues.

Some practical questions have an obvious political dimension, in which case it’s fair to consider that component, but people will often argue over whether the question is “political enough” to justify debate. To deal with this, you need processes to ensure that debate is contained but not overly restricted on this kind of issue.

Making every question political is a trick right out of the OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual. Whether to pay the hosting bill shouldn’t be a political question. Whether to change hosts may or may not be, depending on the reasoning.

[inigyou]

It's political as in it contains politics. Yes paying the hosting bill is political for at least three reasons (belief in the value of money and capitalism, belief that specific host should not be boycotted, belief the whole organisation agrees you get more value from the hosting than from keeping the money). That doesn't mean a political debate is needed every time it's time to pay it. It does mean that if someone says "hey this hosting provider is also hosting kiwifarms, should we really give them money?" a response of "paying the hosting isn't political" is incorrect.

[fluoridation]

You didn't answer my question about what is not allowed to be challenged.

>Yes, in communities that try to claim that certain things are "political" and certain things are "not political", "banning cryptocurrency" could be rejected on the basis that it is "political". The point is that saying something like "we don't do politics" is absurd.

I don't understand what you're saying. You switched tracked halfway through the thought from talking about communities that distinguish between things that are or aren't political to rejection of taking political stances.

What is usually meant by "we don't do politics" is that an institution or organization will avoid picking sides on political issues. This is not merely not absurd, but pretty much necessary for any organization that doesn't have ideological goals and doesn't want to foster internal factions.

Like the sibling comment said, just banning cryptocurrency might be political or it might not, depending on the reason for it. Rejecting reasons such as "crypto bad" is a tenable position if an organization seeks to maintain a neutral stance.

[tkel]

Every organization has ideological goals. That's what I'm getting at. Sometimes they are unable to recognize it because it's been normalized. What you define as "neutral" is not actually neutral. Such statements are themselves attempts at controlling what is normal/acceptable. The terms of acceptable discussion is context-dependent, but trying to set them at "politics" is contradictory, as I've explained.

[fluoridation]

To name one easy example, for-profit companies don't have ideological goals.

But just for the sake of argument I'll grant it and amend my statement: What is usually meant by "we don't do politics" is that an institution or organization will avoid picking sides on irrelevant political issues. A cat shelter doesn't need to have an official position on abortion to function, and in all likelihood having one would be counter to its purposes.

[inigyou]

Maximizing profit is already an ideological goal. Some companies have others subordinate to it. For example Microsoft is committed to stack ranking, Google is committed to only promoting people who ship new products and then kill them, Apple is committed to each team not knowing what the other is doing so they don't leak it, and Oracle is committed to suing its customers for more money.