[Red_Comet_88]

They also block Brave browsers entirely. I tried reading into it, but it appears to be one of those "programmer personality quirks". The fellow that runs the site appears to think Brave is a scam of some sort, and just decided to block the entire browser.

Oh well, I'll stick to HN.

[acaloiar]

This is why Brave was blocked [1.]. I'd have felt the same way, and people are entitled to their grudges. I think the grudge is reasonable.

[1.] https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters-ansible/issues/45#issue...

[maeil]

There's millions of much stronger reasons to hold grudges against Google and Microsoft, yet their browsers are somehow fine? It's incredibly arbitrary. For what it's worth I think crypto has been a scourge on society so I'm not making this point for any crypto shilling reasons.

[acaloiar]

Not only is not "incredibly arbitrary" for lobsters to respond in kind to Brave's specific, targeted action against lobsters -- it's not arbitrary whatsoever.

[blueflow]

You can scroll through the lobste.rs moderation log to get in impression of how moderation on lobste.rs works:

https://lobste.rs/moderations

Also incidents like this:

https://lobste.rs/s/zp4ofg/lobster_burntsushi_has_left_site

This kind of stuff gives me hugbox vibes, i would not feel safe there. I'm somewhat sure some of the moderators use the website as personal political leverage.

[hagbard_c]

I used to have an account on that site as well and left for the same reason: repeated messages telling me I had been flagged and I needed to reconsider when I dared to venture too far outside the desired narrative. There will be many others who have made or will make the same decision which leaves sites like this with a population which is mostly ideologically cohesive. Maybe that is a good thing for those sites and maybe the participants feel 'safe' in such an environment but it surely is lacking in stimulating curiosity and widening one's intellectual horizon.

[420_14_88_69]

Sounds familiar, except here there's no notification when you get flagged/deaded/shadowbanned.

[hagbard_c]

At least HN allows you to come back under another name and with that is less at risk of totally succumbing to the echo chamber mentality. It also does not tie new users to existing ones nor are existing users who happen to invite new users who are deemed to be 'problematic' punished for those invitations.

[srid]

> At least HN allows you to come back under another name

You can also come back under the same account, which is what I did. I emailed dang, and promised to respect the site's guidelines this time.

Lobste.rs on the other hand has terrible moderation, with moderators arguably being from one political clique. You can find details about the ridiculous ban they issued on my account in this X thread: https://x.com/sridca/status/1751586241110519837

pushcx then tried to argue with me here after 3 months, lying about the ban: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40166912#40176320

[hagbard_c]

Yes, well, I probably would be lying if I did so so I just reincarnate instead. All my bans have been over the same thing, this me not following the 'west coast narrative' in some clearly political discussions. I can't promise to say what I consider to be closer to the truth and I do think sites like these are better off with a more diverse [1] group of participants so I'll just settle for a short lifespan while I wait for the place to become more accepting to different viewpoints.

[1] diverse in the only way which really matters, this being diversity of opinion. On the internet nobody knows you're a dog after all.

[bb88]

Is it me, or is brave more of a cryptocurrency platform that pretends to be a browser?

A lot of people don't really like the toxic discussions that crypto usually tends to devolve in. So it makes sense to block the browser if you don't want those people on your server.

[ykonstant]

I am no fan of Brave, but where is the logic here? Just because someone uses Brave, they will engage in toxic discussions on crypto? Am I missing something?

[tonfreed]

It's probably more of a "I don't like Brendan Eich" thing, but the maintainer can't really say that without sounding unhinged.

Then again, I actively go out of my way to be toxic on the internet, so maybe they have a point

[bb88]

The crypto world is full of toxic.

[secondcoming]

I use Brave for YouTube and other streaming, and I've never encountered any crypto stuff. They have/had their own BAT token that dealt with paid advertising but I've not seen it mentioned in quite some time.

As far as I can tell it's just another browser that blocks a lot of internet crap.

[sshine]

It’s my impression that it’s mostly a browser. But I don’t use it, because who needs another WebKit clone.

[TiredOfLife]

It's you.