And that's an entirely reasonable stance for management to take at most companies. But not facebook. They've deliberately tailored the platform to be a monetized political outrage machine. Its like ESPN announcing they plan to "curb" sports talk in the office.
If Yankees and Red Sox fans regularly got into shouting matches on the ESPN software development mailing lists, I expect they'd be told to knock it off, and I wouldn't see that as a contradiction of the idea that sports is important.
If politics is consequential, then one of the worst ways to handle it is have people digging themselves into entrenched extreme positions just to "win" the ideological war against their dehumanized imaginary enemy. Better to shut them up so at least they have a chance to engage their brain in peace without the endless emotional need to fight for whatever unreasonable nonsense somebody goaded them into getting angry about.
The reason to avoid political discussions is that they're often as toxic as the worst sports arguments, not that the underlying topics don't matter. No matter how important the underlying issue is, having my coworkers call each other nasty names won't resolve it.
You're right. Then again ESPN doesn't bend over backwards to constantly bombard viewers with content that will sow division and hate between franchises so I'd imagine it's less likely to be a recurring issue.
