Invitation-only is the future of online communities. Lobsters still has a pulse because you need to know someone to get in and it’s a bad look if you invite annoying people.
I wish lobste.rs would be a tiny bit easier to get access to. Some of my blog posts have been discussed there and every time I try to get access, I can’t get past their IRC stuff.
You should overlay a banner on your blog when they send you an HTTP Referer explaining their nonsense. Maybe then they'll get the message.
Then again, maybe they like the ability to critique your posts without you being able to rebut their opinions. It's an effective tactic in online echo chambers.
Well, lobste.rs requires an email to invite a user. If you had one on your profile, or on your github, or on your website I would have done it as a drive-by since your site is interesting and pretty lobste.rs-y content.
FWIW, you might want to consider publishing your e-mail address in your HN profile or on your website. Otherwise it’s hard for people to get in touch with you.
I've been waiting for my lobste.rs invite for years. I joined the IRC for a few days, but being in Australia, rarely saw too much activity. I could chase someone down for an invite, but at that point I just don't care that much.
I was given my invite from a decent person who, I believe, basically has an "open door" policy. I'm happy to pay it forward and give you an invite if you want it. abetusk@mechaelephant.com
That's nonsense wrt invitation-only being the future. I can equally say that free speech is the future. For comparison, Reddit does very well without being invitation only.
It's also not open access. You have to run an invisible tightrope so its algorithms won't automatically shadowban you and then you have to run a barely visible tightrope to get enough karma to not have your posts automatically removed from every subreddit.
> Invitation-only is the future of online communities.
This feels antithetical/dystopian/elitist compared to what online communities are, for me. I think it's ok for some communities to be like this, but I don't think it's the future of online communities.
I think some are fine, but if I had to choose one I'd choose open access, so I think it's the more important of the two. And in fact it's because the web is open, "no permission needed" by default that allows elitist groups to exist on the web. So I don't think I see it as a mistake. The alternative would be... You can only create a website if you're invited to the internet by someone who already has access? You have to get approval for your website from some authority before it goes public? Those were all potential futures we imo thankfully and carefully avoided!
That's actually how it already works, but there are large commercial access providers known as "ISPs". Before there were ISPs, you literally could only get on the internet with a direct connection to someone on the internet, usually a large university.
>Those were all potential futures we imo thankfully and carefully avoided!
I am not so thankful. But it is coming from my view of the current world.
I think open Internet for business is good. But open Internet for communication was bad. I cannot think of one good thing that have resulted from an open internet for communication/discussions. It has turned out to result in a collective, perpetual state of seizure for all humanity.
I am someone who had to learn stuff from random encounters with books in the 90s. Even then, I would not have it any other way...
This is called the Eternal September problem, after the influx of fresh users to Usenet at the start of every school year, being extended indefinitely as AOL brought new users continually to Usenet.
Isn't this how alot of discord works? maybe the communities are leniant with inviting but it still happens. A group chat is basically invite only too and that's pretty popular for communication.
I think we need to remove dystopian and elitist from the dictionary because at this point you can't breathe without being accused of it.
Deciding who is in or out is the fundamental basis of any community, that's freedom of association. That's what defines a community. A place anyone can enter is a train station bathroom and that's what the logical terminus of the open internet seems to be.
I think scopes/criteria/boundaries on communities are fine, I disagree that invite-only (as one implementation of community boundaries) is the future of online communities.
Although the statement "invite-only only is the future of online communities" isn't super well defined (what does it mean to "be the future"?), so I think the comments are debating past each other.
Lobste.rs is very anti-AI. They force any LLM topic to be tagged with “vibecoding” even when the majority of LLM posts are not about vibecoding.
AI posts are usually the most commented on. Linus Torvalds’ comments saying that LLMs are actually useful is still on the front page, tagged as vibecoding, and has a lot of comments from people mostly disagreeing with him.
Lobste.rs is more of a monoculture than Hacker News. If you get downvoted enough they stick a banner on the top of the page inviting you to delete your account. It has a nasty side effect of driving away good contributors who don’t align perfectly with the hive mind. It’s a site where you learn to keep your mouth shut if your input doesn’t agree with what the core users want to hear.
Being anti-AI is fine by me, but the hardcore Tumblr dogma can be very tiring sometimes; even if only as a reader interested in the valuable technical comments.
I originally went to lobste.rs because I wanted to avoid repetitive discussion and get more technical stuff. In time, though, lobste.rs got fairly boring since it's always the same stuff over and over again. I found an alternative means[0] of filtering out boring things here on HN and it's enjoyable to use again.
0: deleting comments of people who aren't interesting from my view and highlighting ones who often say things that are interesting, the user I'm replying to is one of the latter
> In time, though, lobste.rs got fairly boring since it's always the same stuff over and over again.
There are some interesting comments there from some people who don’t spend time on other sites, but your assessment is similar to mine
My comment about being anti-AI above may not have been clear. They actually talk about AI a lot and AI threads attract a high amount of activity. The difference is that insightful or honest comments don’t have much of a chance because there’s a clear popular opinion on the site and any information that doesn’t fit isn’t welcome.
The giant soupy mess of opinions on HN can be tiresome, but it’s nice to get a wider range. HN is its own little bubble but at least there’s some diversity of experiences to be found.
It's a lot smaller of a community than HN, so it will naturally have a smaller range of opinions merely due to the fact that it has a lot fewer users.
That said, I don't believe it's as much of a hivemind as you've portrayed. I've seen dissenting opinions voiced there which weren't downvoted (or at least not noticeably), while the same opinion in a similar thread here on HN would be downvoted and flagged. So I don't think that getting downvoted enough so that you're invited to delete your account is a common occurrence with productive members.
It's fine not to be an AI user, just some people there seem to be holding their breath and stomping their feet until it goes away. Which leads to a really repetitive and boring discussion. (I'm not a member there, but they often have better technical links vs HN.)
> So I don't think that getting downvoted enough so that you're invited to delete your account is a common occurrence with productive members.
It is! It’s a rite of passage on the site if you dare comment anything that someone might disagree with.
There have been several high profile cases of valued members getting fed up with it and leaving the site. One example where even the community was starting to question if this is really what they want: https://lobste.rs/s/zp4ofg
I don't think it is a much a hive mind but it is - or at least was - susceptible to manipulation by individuals who know how to game the system to push their own narrative. I got into a discussion with one of these, a 'furry' who posted semi-relevant articles laced with furry-themed illustrations where those illustrations seemed to be the main point of the articles. After a number of such articles I remarked on this and was banned shortly after, somewhat out of the blue. The moderator did not like this type of 'sensitive' discussion which more or less meant the site was fair game for those willing to abuse it knowing that any discussion on their abuse would be suppressed. Maybe things have changed, maybe they haven't but it did leave me rather disillusioned with the way the place was moderated and as such I haven't been there for years.
I dont remember why I was kind of barred from lobsters , but I applaud all this behavior you mentioned. In the end, that's how normal clickes of friends/interest groups form (or formed 30 years ago in real life.)
If you got into my group of death metal people, and suddenly started talking about Oasis... we would invite you to get out haha.
Same with patriots.win . They may be a group of right wing biggots, but hey, they did their platform and are happy talking there.
> I dont remember why I was kind of barred from lobsters , but I applaud all this behavior you mentioned.
Some serious cognitive dissonance here.
I think a lot of people like this idea of a close-knit clique of like minded people, but the communities tend to pick up toxic qualities where membership becomes a game in itself. Anyone who doesn’t fall in line with the established in-crowd gets pushed out via the Byzantine rules that the in-crowd uses to maintain their position.
I still visit and participate, but I’m realistic about what it is. There is some value there, but you have to navigate it like a small subreddit where the moderator keeps tight control over what can be discussed and indirectly or directly influences the allowable opinions on the site. I really liked their original ideas about having an open moderation log and clear rules, but I’ve seen more than enough questionable moderation decisions and selective application of the rules to accept that it’s not as pure as I thought it was going to be.
Hmmmm interesting analogy! I'm not too sure if cliques apply as much to online communities. Cliques are usually exclusionary not because people don't meet the criteria/scope of the clique, but by scale constraints, eg how many people someone can maintain a close relationship with. Online communities are kind of sufficiently different because of this scale. They can grow basically indefinitely, and are only limited by the stated scope/criteria of the community.
It's a wonderful place. It feels like HN, but with the Silicon Valley attitude dialed way way way down, and with a much narrower scope (politics, economics and entrepreneurship are all off-topic, for example).
The SV attitude isn't there but there's active assholes who wield their moderation weirdly. I deactivated my account before deactivations were added to the logs and I don't remember what made me quit. I've largely avoided Lobsters since.
I joined their IRC channel last week and it's been rather chill.
I do like the invite-only nature of the site though, keeps quality high...while making some folks tyrannical.
Every such "club" inevitably attracts a specific sort that badly want to join just for the sense of exclusivity and a chance to virtue-signal their member status. It's same thing with some hard-to-get-into torrent trackers — once in, people become poster-children for Stockholm syndrome and the mods really get off on their perceived power. It's also the same with expensive new sport car models that manufacturers sell to collectors.
My intuition says it's to do with Status Signaling theory .
Lobsters still got a pulse, largely.