The removal of Xinjiang posts from the main page has prompted me to post something that I've been thinking about for a while. This is not about that removal per se, but rather the underlying problems with how the site is structured that it reveals. Perhaps you, reading this, love c/main, and in many ways I do as well. That said, we should get rid of it for our own good. The issue with c/main is that it is a general posting space. c/literature is for posting about literature, c/thedunktank is dunking on people and so forth. What is main for? Mostly for if you want your post to have higher visibility. And who doesn't? In this way, it starves the comms of content, but this is well known. The bigger issue is that the whole point of the R*ddit-esque structure of comms is designed so that you can pick and choose what you're interested in. Don't like furry stuff? Just unsub from c/furry. Main, however, has no content restrictions and, invariably, this will lead to struggles about what should appear there. The latest is Xinjiang posts, before that it was stonks posting, before that it was electoralism. But there will always be more content that is in some way divisive. Maybe you don't want to see low-effort shitposts or memes (I mean, I do, but you get what I'm saying), maybe you don't like daily updates on AOC's Twitter feed, and so on. Nobody wants to unsubscribe from c/main just to avoid certain posts, because, after all, that's where all the content is, so you can't avoid whatever it is you don't like. We could continue on as we've been doing and banning topics from main piecemeal as they become too annoying to too many people, even though that's guaranteed to annoy the people who actually like those topics. But that then dilutes the one purpose that c/main actually has, which is general-purpose posting. Now instead of "c/main is for whatever" it's "c/main is about whatever. except Xinjiang, except stonks, except an ever growing list of topics." And are these rules written down anywhere? No, you just need to be really online to know them, which is pretty unwelcoming to any new comrades who find their way here. We need to take the plunge and get rid of main. Let all that content go to the comms, let people pick and choose what they want to see. Let main die so that a thousand comms may bloom. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.