I specifically only ever look at Subscribed, never Hot or All or Local specifically to dodge all the US politics. As an American. This works well for me, but I admit just jumping on almost any instance and seeing what is there before you get to log in and filter to only Subscribed is very disheartening. Always some outraging and depressing US politics content on the front page, even without algorithms intentionally trying to push outrage (because unfortunately, outrage naturally succeeds on its own anyways—being angry generates more urge to type 5 paragraphs).
The other commenter’s explanation works well too. But if I have to deal with all these horrid political happenings in real life, I don’t want to come online and see more of it and dwell on it. And having all those politics so popular online… for some it might be informative but I think for most it’s just a venting space and I’m not sure if it’s helpful (getting rid of bad feelings and expressing your feelings is important, a third party could look on and see peoples’ points and get their mind changed) or letting people blow off anger in a way that neutralizes most of their energy to help others or resist bad things more tangibly (volunteering for soup kitchens, calling up their representatives, protesting, local organizing, paying the switching cost and putting in the time needed to move away from infuriating enshittified platforms and learn or self-host a new one), while pushing potential users away because they think the Fediverse is all US politics all the time with no escape.
Grateful you are trying to make a community that is more likely to hold solutions and people trying to solve outraging problems, than people posting about how another bad and outraging thing happened to the tune of 300 upvotes and 30 comments about how angry they are. Pleased to see an Mbin-hosted community, too. More software diversity on the Fediverse is nice.
On one hand I definitely respect where you are coming from. “Too political” is frequently wielded at the oppressed by oppressors; “two genders, male and political” and all that.
On another hand, as a queer, neurodivergent person of color I don’t handle the constant aggression and “another bad thing happened because of a country’s government, or a political party” posts well. I get paralyzed into inaction. Fediverse “apolitical” communities, at least in my experience, tend to be safe spaces for people like me without bigotry. I’m far from the most oppressed person on earth or even the USA, but I do think I am correct when I say that sometimes, some oppressed people want a break from constantly thinking about and reading about their oppression. If I don’t aggressively curate my feed on the Fediverse and instead take what is hot and popular, it is going to be chock-full of people arguing about politics (specifically in the sense of big actions and policies taken by governments). So I curate, avoid these posts, and find enough energy to take political action in real life instead of scrolling thinkpieces on why this political happening happened for hours online. If there were no spaces free of that specific kind of politics (that yes, also made the political choice of removing bigoted posts and comments), I’d probably eventually just be chased off the internet entirely.
But yet again, this could be my own specific perspective talking and other people do feel silenced and suppressed, so…