On CWs: Which CWs should we require?

to me, outside of the most extreme of circumstances e.g. as outlined by cohost's guidelines on mandatory cws where the generally-accepted moral character of the discussed topic is utterly repugnant and illegality is unquestionable, i believe enforcement of mandatory content warnings by league authority is ill-advised at best and harmful at worst

a content warning is, ostensibly, a courtesy tool; it's something that the league can recommend use cases for, but outside of extreme circumstances should not enforce the use of.

i also believe that the language around content warnings is important. in the case of cohost, they state: "cohost allows for creators to provide content warnings for posts containing sensitive content." they then go on to define recommendations towards their usage, but i believe the descriptor, "sensitive content", is key - it's a neutral term, but one that encourages empathy and consideration for others! a good part of a social media feature, as surface-level as it may sound, is in optics, and leading with a neutral descriptor helps to reduce the stigma

marginalisation is a topic i've seen come up a few times, and it's a concern i concur with. i believe my opinion is entirely compatible with mitigation efforts to this end, though i haven't thought in-depth about the smothering effect that cws have on marginalised groups. if anyone has a perspective on this, i'd appreciate them sharing.

in conclusion: no CWs outside of extreme circumstances should be mandatory. CWs are tools first and foremost, and should be recommended for "sensitive content" as defined by cohost's guidelines; using the neutral term "sensitive content" encourages empathy and helps destigmatise CW usage. i believe these ideas are compatible with demarginalisation, but would like more perspective

I'm of the opinion that enforcing much in the way of mandatory CWs is going to encourage people to interact with content that they know they would rather avoid, just because the presence of any sort of clickable button is going to attract at least some people to Click Here For More, regardless of what the button actually identifies is underneath. Without some additional configuration to define that This Is A Content Warning That May Upset You, Yes You, Directly, And You Shouldn't Click It, there isn't much point in mandating them when a tag filtering solution is generally easier.

I think generally content warnings should be applied as a courtesy, rather than a mandate, with a similar sort of judgement being used as one would for a NSFW filter. If you got caught looking at it by someone over your shoulder, would that be uncomfortable? Could it get you or someone else in actual trouble? Maybe a flag would be helpful, in those cases. But if it's something that you as a reader know that you're not comfortable hearing about for whatever reason, then you as a reader should be establishing tag and terminology muting criteria to keep that content from showing up, and the person posting it should be using tags, preferably ones that are agreed upon to convey the specific meaning by others who are sensitive to it, to identify this content and help minimize friction with your fellow users on the League.

None of these are really perfect solutions and I'm not sure any exist. I do, however, feel that if we settle on some kind of system, then we also need to settle on what we do to enforce that system if a user is unwilling to abide by it, and what to do if it's determined that the system we settle on is no longer serving this function effectively.