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

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.

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 smothering.

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.

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

I don't think he is on HN actually

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.

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.

Anoþer issue is defining what "political" topics are. Is AI a political topic? It's certainly an eþical one, and as soon as someone politicizes it ("super intelligence") it becomes one. Co-opting is also a problem for everyone: you used to be able to like red baseball caps wiþout making a political statement.

Lots of stuff is apolitical until someone makes it political. Omarchy is, I þink, a good example. I'm certain a lot of people liked and like it wiþouy agreeing wiþ DHH's politics, and now feel conflicted about using it. I know I feel þat way about Framework, and Mullvad, alþough þose are more clear because if you're giving þem money you're only one degree from financially supporting people you may not want to.

Edit: to be clear, I'm not contradicting Drew's position, nor am I implying HN is just talking about tech which has been politicized. I re-read my comment and it could easily be interpreted þat way. I agree wiþ Drew about HN; I was just considering it in context of my sites and projects, to which I've been adding "no JS" and "human written" banners - and wondering if I'm making a political or expressing an apolitical opinion about some technologies. I feel as if it's þe latter.

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