I'm not sure there is a better way - all the user moderation approaches I've seen involve leaning on the regulars to spot stuff. The alternative is dedicated moderators which tends to lead to it's own problems. I don't think you want to rely on those who have just signed up as that would be open to abuse pretty quickly.

But "want to hear" on HN is sometimes just intelligent or interesting comments, not necessarily bias confirming...

I remember on stack overflow in order to add a comment with a critical addendum to a question someone else asked, I needed to scrounge around and beg for rep like a second class citizen. Eventually I gave up and posted my addendum as a question with a link to the original, then got in trouble with the mods. I told the mods what the fuck and they added the comment for me under their name. Eventually I earnt enough points to speak; which was then retracted when they increased the minimum rep required to comment again.

Made me boycott that website forever

I read both, though lobsters seems to have more useful content lately. I would like to join so I ask comment/ask questions, but don't know anyone there to ask.

Lobsters manages an okay community (caveat: from what I've seen), but their lack of particularly strong rules or guidelines (just as with HN) don't give me a ton of confidence in their ability to handle value conflict. Following, they don't really state their community values anyway, which is something I find increasingly important.

Also with respect to the feedback cycles from hiding progressive comments that has been posed; I see a similar thing happening with these invite-only platforms. You are less likely to have diverse opinions and viewpoints from a userbase that largely grows only from the people in the same degree as existing users.

I've written about that last part before, and I'd like to stress that's as neutral an appraisal I can proffer; I think for some communities that is an ideal model, but for many others it would be stifling.

Couldn't immediately find an RSS feed there, does it require an account?

In my experience, AI has ruined HN. There used to be a lot of articles that weren't technology related on the front page. Philosophy, art, history, geography, lots of cool things that were interesting to intellectuals. Now it's probably 80% AI stories. I'm struggling justify leaving it in my RSS reader.

I really want to enjoy Mastodon, I truly do. But my experience has been that it is a living doom spiral by 95% of posting users on there. I learn a lot, but it also drags me towards a highly negative thought pattern and mini-existential crises. I still occasionally review it for the information, but it's like watching an episode of "This is Us" knowing that I'm going to cry multiple times by opening this pandora's box. Lemmy has been a lot more varied. Still deeply disturbing news, some weirdness from the .ml crowd, but overall I'm much happier here even if it's bc my feeds sandwich disturbing news with memes for the dumb caveman brain that's using this site.

I'd assume because there's no alternative that's good enough.

HN has its problems, but it's still worthwhile if you can ignore the politics and focus on technical discussions.

I don't think he is on HN actually

They use excuses like this:

The flagged comments given as examples are exactly the type I don't want to see here. Not because they are wrong (they are not), but because they are boring, low-calorie declarations of obvious that add very little value to the topic at hand.

They see rhemselves as people who should only have to read what they deem as intellectual conversations.

And that stems from the HN rules.

It’s all designed to shut down progressives.

Currently there is an interesting discussion of Georgism with 300+ comments. Not exactly a right wing subject...

It always rubbed me like it was 4chan trying to be presentable, and I could never figure out why.

Drew has posted a response in defense of these allegations.

Having read it as well the "report" on him you linked, I personally find the report lacks credibility. I take much more stock in Drew's accounting of things, including his mature ownership of the bad decisions he's made in the past.

As for the Stallman Report: it's not a smear piece in my view. It's a whistleblow that outlines an argument why RMS is unfit to lead the FSF with accompanying evidence. You may disagree with some of it, but it's hardly malicious; I can sympathize with anyone who wishes to see better from the leaders of the major social movements of our day.

And as for why Drew initially denied his involvement, I found his response reasonable:

Myself and the other authors asserted our moral rights to publish anonymously, motivated by our wish to reduce our exposure to the exact sort of harassment I’ve been subjected to over the years.

What a string of grasping at straws. I'm sure this (Attempted) character assassination has nothing to do with Drew DeVault publicly naming and shaming fascist developers, with receipts.

Oh my God he looks at hentai! Oh, the humanity!