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Part of what had initially brought me to lobste.rs 8 years ago was that it seemed like the userbase and mods had their heads in the right place with regards to certain political questions especially compared to hacker news. For instance, you weren’t going to see any links to Quillette or Fox News on the front page. I don’t know if it was a matter of policy but for the most part it seemed pretty clear that right wingers and centrists were generally not welcome. Political and ideological discussions occasionally cropped up in article comments and it was generally fine because pretty much everyone was on the same page. This seems to have changed over time perhaps as a consequence of the site becoming more popular. I’ve seen people get reprimanded by mods for pointing out that Jeff Geerling is a pro-life piece of shit, for instance — I wasn’t aware of that and was grateful to find it out, because I don’t want to support people like that with page views and YouTube subscriptions, but apparently it crossed a line by “turning a discussion about technology into a political debate.” Ive seen this happen more and more in comment threads since then, as well as an increase in submissions for other explicitly right-wing “anti-woke” blogs who happen to also post about tech. Needless to say I am pretty disappointed. Deep down, it feels like what I want — a FOSS-and-programming-oriented link aggregator with a zero tolerance policy for fascist bullshit — is an impossibility just because of the nature of the technology industry and the ghoulish investors who sustain it. I guess that’s part of why I’m so bullish on degrowth these days. Hard to muster enthusiasm for these communities that seem to go out of their way to welcome people who want me dead.