I love this forum, and I appreciate the moderation decisions by the now ex moderation team. It's sad that these are the consequences, but I hope we can grow again in the future. I fully understand and respect your decision to step down.
But now, if I may soapbox to all members of the forum: It's funny to me that this is where some of us draw the line, but not when Erin was threatened with lawsuits, because both are political and off topic to the forum (this is not me picking a side; it's just pointing out the similarities). If anything, the tariffs posts are less inappropriate for ASR because it affects more of us more directly too.
@amirm since the tariff thread is locked, I just wanted to respond to one of the posts in the thread, namely the one with the picture of sweatshop labor. It's a shame that sweatshops exist at all, so it gives a bad taste when the problem is framed to show that people in the US could get sweatshops as a result instead of having white collar careers. I understand that this isn't the point, but it comes off that way to me.
To everyone else, it always reeks of privilege when I hear talk about how people go to xyz game or forum or whatever to escape from politics. Life itself is political, and those of us not immediately impacted need to just need to accept that. I agree that the tariff thread is controversial, but it directly impacts Amir's role as a reviewer. Maybe that thread could have stopped after the third post or so; the point had been made by then. But what's done is done.
I'm just one voice of many, so don't crucify me. It is frustrating (both the consequences of the tariffs themselves and the consequences of the thread), but an Internet forum is not a democracy, and never was in the first place...
