Seems normal to me to avoid it. Honestly I can't even imagine chatting about anything political in public within a company's chat channels. I have zero interes

Seems normal to me to avoid it. Honestly I can't even imagine chatting about anything political in public within a company's chat channels. I have zero interest in politics, if I had to mentally filter dozens of lines of chat about XYZ political topic when I'm trying to find something technical that would bother me. It wouldn't offend me but it would have a negative affect on productivity due to spending more time finding things. If a group of folks with a common interest want to talk about politics privately that seems reasonable to me. That would be comparable to going out for lunch in a non-remote setting, chatting in the parking lot or an empty conference room during a break.