[HN Gopher] Lobsters Interview
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Lobsters Interview
Author : blenderob
Score : 55 points
Date : 2025-11-28 16:42 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (susam.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (susam.net)
| 8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote:
| Based on this interview, it seems Lobsters community there is
| pretty interesting for the tech crowd? Perhaps one should take a
| look there.
|
| Unfortunately, Lobsters (previously?) blocked Brave browser and I
| don't feel like switching browsers just to visit a site.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| My main gripe with lobsters vs hn is that lobsters has a lot of
| specific in the weeds tech articles, like about some
| functionality of a specific python library. It's way too
| specific, I find the mix of articles on hn much better from a
| generalist perspective
| internetter wrote:
| Conversely, hn gets a lot of content which simply isn't
| intellectually stimulating. Like on the front page atm is
| pocketbase--a git repo which currently has 53k stars which
| I've known of for many years, and a surface level article on
| RAG titled 'So you wanna build a local RAG?' ~~which seems to
| mostly just exist so the author can plug their company in the
| first line.~~ which doesn't really contribute much niche
| knowledge you can't obtain anywhere else. As a blogger myself
| I can't claim superiority--I've done this plenty, but this
| content just doesn't seem to do as well on lobste.rs as
| compared to really niche content which is directly relevant
| to very few people, but as a result required a great deal of
| research and time and very possibly is of great utility to a
| rare few.
|
| Edit: though to be clear this is a spectrum with heavy
| overlap. Just general biases I've observed. Like on Lobste.rs
| there is an article titled 'Electron vs. Tauri' atm.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Personally I enjoy that content a lot. My guess is that HN is
| read by tech interested people these days not just
| programmers. The risk of being more generalist is losing your
| distinguishing lens. If I wanted generic news with a techie
| take there's sites like Ars and The Verge that already do
| this. If HN becomes those sites it's only a losing game.
| rgreekguy wrote:
| If you are interested in Rust, there is a lot of that posted
| there. Politically they have similar views to HN.
|
| I almost forgot why I stopped visiting, they had some open
| conversations with Hector... erm Asahi Lina (just Lina now?)
| the other day...
| chao- wrote:
| The differences are well summarized on their /about page. I
| find both HN and Lobsters valuable for different reasons, but
| and the differences that stand out to me are:
|
| - Tries to be more purely technical. Generic political or
| business links are flagged or removed.
|
| - Aggressive marketing/self-promotion is moderated: If you
| join, post three links to your own blog, and nothing else,
| expect someone to call out if you post a fourth. I know HN does
| this to some extent, but it is very explicit on Lobsters.
|
| - Not "news", not necessarily about recent things.
| Project/language releases even have a "release" tag so you can
| hide them systematically. A ten-year-old article explaining
| some library internals is just as likely to come up.
|
| - Instead of "downvotes" there are "flags", which requires
| choosing a reason. Ideally encourages people to pause and
| think, instead of scrolling and clicking a down arrow 20 times
| in a thread.
|
| - Weekly community threads of "What are you working on this
| week?" and "What are you doing this weekend?" which is nice for
| a smaller community.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| They are also aggressively anti-AI
|
| edit: If you are downvoting because you are also anti-AI, my
| comment is not about whether supporting AI is good. I'm only
| remarking that they are aggressively negative about the
| topic. The aggression is obnoxious and less tolerated with
| other topics.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| The proposal to rename the vibecoding tag to something else
| provides a pretty good sense of the overall sentiment among
| the site's members:
| https://lobste.rs/s/gkzmfy/let_s_rename_vibecoding_tag_llms
| Aurornis wrote:
| HN comment sections are full of anti-AI remarks, but
| there's enough volume of contents that you can still find
| some quality info here.
|
| On Lobsters it feels like the angry anti-LLM mindset is
| woven into the site's culture, like you're breaking some
| unspoken rule if you accidentally say something non-
| derogatory about AI.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Unfortunately Lobsters might claim to be non political but is
| actually quite political. Because the moderators and
| increasingly the remaining community identifies with American
| progressive left values, a pretty common thing to see on the
| site is political posts along those lines getting upvoted and
| other political philosophies being flagged as political.
|
| It's probably the most deeply unpleasant part about the site
| IMO. I don't think there's anything wrong with moderators all
| sharing certain politics. On Lobsters though, there's this
| hugely disingenuous gaslighting culture where the political
| ingroup can break rules while the outgroup can't but it's
| never explicitly acknowledged by the moderators or the
| community.
| karlgkk wrote:
| They do not claim to be non political. They just try to
| keep explicitly political material from being posted on
| their site - from any point of view.
|
| > there's this hugely disingenuous gaslighting culture
|
| Fun fact: that's called "they don't want you around".
| You're being vibe checked out. Running communities is
| difficult and sometimes it's just easier to build a
| community of people you want to be around. They've never
| been running it as a public service or a free speech
| platform. And that's okay.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > They just try to keep explicitly political material
| from being posted on their site - from any point of view.
|
| Right that is what they claim in their guidelines but in
| practice this is very untrue. American left progressive
| material generally does fine on the site, both from the
| rule moderation perspective and community sentiment.
|
| > Fun fact: that's called "they don't want you around".
| You're being vibe checked out.
|
| It's funny, in your attempt to sarcastically sneer in
| your comment you just tried to build a strawman of my
| political opinions in your head.
|
| Regardless the easiest way for them to settle this would
| to say it explicitly. "We strongly believe in left social
| justice values and that informs our moderation and the
| content we allow on the site." That's all the guidelines
| would need to make it clear to everyone what's going on.
| Instead they do this gaslighting dance where they never
| explicitly _say_ their political position but instead
| enforce it by enforcing the rules more harshly on those
| they politically disagree with. They could instead point
| to this guideline to moderate or flag content they
| politically disagree with. It 's upfront and clear.
|
| The Internet as it is is subject to a huge amount of
| context collapse. Moreover tech people are more likely
| than the average person to have lower EQ. Using unrelated
| moderation rules to fight political battles is a fairly
| negative thing in my opinion. Being clear about what you
| allow and disallow does everyone a service and level sets
| expectations.
| avadodin wrote:
| There are some very smart people on that site that only
| contribute there(although some are old slashdotters from
| back in the day) so it is a shame.
|
| I get the impression by watching the community that
| interacting with them is basically impossible as a normal
| person.
|
| Someone gets an invite, has productive technical
| discussions, eventually says something that doesn't align
| exactly with their religion(and we're talking really
| obscure stuff here) and he gets swiftly and permanently
| banned possibly bringing the person who invited him down
| with him as well.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Fun fact: that's called "they don't want you around".
| You're being vibe checked out.
|
| This mindset where the culture war lines have been drawn
| and anyone who doesn't get perfectly in line is "vibe
| checked" out is highly political, even if the claim is
| that political content is excluded.
|
| The snarky and derisive way it's presented as "fun fact"
| and you've jumped to the conclusion that the commenter is
| on the wrong side of the culture war, and therefore a
| fair target for derision, is actually why I never "vibed"
| into that site for very long.
| mannanj wrote:
| Fun fact: telling the guy saying it's gaslighting that
| it's not, with your reframe of reality words like "fun
| fact" are gaslighting.
|
| I've found gaslight-positive people who go on "vibes" are
| indeed still gaslighters. Abuse is abuse. You can justify
| it with "vibe check" and "they don't want you around" all
| you want - does my not wanting you around and treating
| you poorly make it any less undignified and abusive?
| GaryBluto wrote:
| > They've never been running it as a public service or a
| free speech platform.
|
| I largely agree with this but it doesn't shield them from
| criticism.
|
| > vibe checked
|
| > fun fact
|
| > And that's okay.
|
| If you want people to agree with or understand your
| viewpoint I'd suggest conveying them in a way that
| doesn't immediately harken back to BuzzFeed and pop
| journalism.
| fleebee wrote:
| I agree. I like Lobsters but the political brigading is
| unfortunate and the moderation seems to favor one side over
| the other. That almost sours the whole experience, but I've
| learned to hide low quality drama posts and move on.
| schmuckonwheels wrote:
| I've heard it's like HN, but with Reddit-style drama and
| psychotic moderation.
|
| Sounds lovely.
| _se wrote:
| Can you really not see the irony in posting this comment?
| Have you no self-awareness whatsoever?
|
| Peak HN, absolutely hilarious!
| fishmicrowaver wrote:
| The hottest discussion on the first page is how big of a
| meanie Andrew Kelley is. Yeah the sites a vibe for sure.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| A lot of good contributors to Lobsters have been banned for
| poltical reasons. Lobsters (laudably) has a moderation log
| that shows the reasons for user bans among other moderator
| decisions, but typically when when a good contributor is
| banned for poltical reasons (as opposed to e.g. a spammer),
| the actual posts that made the moderators decide to ban have
| been removed and replaced with a moderator message pithily
| asserting that the post was offensive; so it's hard for
| someone to see exactly what the last straw posts were and
| decide how reasonable the moderator was being.
|
| And the moderators and most of the remaining userbase of
| Lobsters are American political left-progressives, and this
| dramatically informs how they choose to moderate.
| kenhwang wrote:
| Lobsters feels a lot like the HN of a decade ago, when the
| community was more technical than business, and the topics were
| technical instead of tech business culture.
| hitekker wrote:
| HN was originally called "Startup News". It was founded by
| tech business people and originally its userbase was largely
| startup tech people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News
|
| I've been here 12 years and I don't remember HN focusing
| solely on technical topics, unless the word "technical" has
| widened to mean "anything one engineer finds intellectually
| stimulating".
| keiferski wrote:
| I have the same impression. If anything, it's become more
| "generic technical" topics and less "insider founder" ones.
| There seems to be a lot more institutional representation
| here than circa 2010-2015, probably because many of the new
| founders then are now running establishment companies.
| kenhwang wrote:
| It was never only technical, but at least it felt like the
| discussion was from people who build, which naturally
| segued into technical discussion. It felt like the majority
| back then were tinkerers and builders.
|
| Nowadays it feels more like sales, marketing, management,
| and investor interests, and topics they find interesting
| which has far more popularity than anything at the
| implementation level. Granted, it matches what matters
| these days to launch a successful company.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| It's a strong, active community. Much more focused on
| computing. I'm happy to invite anyone who wants to join. You
| can find a way to contact me on https://technicalwriting.dev.
| Please also link me to your website, LinkedIn, etc.
| photios wrote:
| > Lobsters (previously?) blocked Brave browser
|
| Yah, I deleted my 10+ yo account there over that. I won't have
| a site tell me what browser I should or should not use.
| veqq wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this! I currently have 4 more interviews
| which need a little editing before "publishing"; I condense
| phrasing, rearrange questions or explanations etc. to try to
| improve the reading flow.
| macintux wrote:
| I definitely like the discussion around the importance of
| defining a vocabulary for your solution. I can almost hear my co-
| workers' eyes rolling when I try to tackle that.
|
| > Thinking about the vocabulary also ensures that we are thinking
| about the data, concepts and notions we are working with in a
| deliberate manner and that kind of thinking also helps when we
| design the architecture of software.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Lobste.rs would be far more interesting to me if by default it
| did not have the same posts as HN.
|
| As it stands, when I want more tech news I go to lobsters and
| there is the same stuff.
| homebrewer wrote:
| At least two bots automatically repost everything from there to
| here to farm karma, so it isn't really possible.
| jm4 wrote:
| I would like to try Lobsters, but they don't have open
| registration and I don't know anyone already there.
| genter wrote:
| You don't need an account to lurk.
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(page generated 2025-11-28 23:00 UTC)