Edit: I search "asahi lina site:news.ycombinator.com" in duckduckgo, and found "https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=35237006" in the first result, for people who want proof.
Also, if I was Marcan or Lina^, then I would probably be the type of person who would like to read and participate in Hacker News, but would likely not because of that type of comment. (I suspect I could have found more toxic ones if I searched harder. This was in the first result) Since they have in effect been excluded from Hacker News, it feels fair to me that they put up an easily bypassable barrier to inform people visiting their site that they have been excluded, and what can be done to fix that.
^ I neither know nor care if the two are the same. I haven't reviewed the evidence, and it's bad internet educate to try and dig up someone's anonymous persona, so I won't try.
Marcan is of course free to redirect HN visitors to his site to a long screed about how much he despises HN, just as Matt is free to block WP Engine users from his site and/or rant about them in WordPress feeds that show up in the admin panel.
But in both cases others are free to consider this sort of reaction quite ridiculous and unhelpful, and talk about it.
Interestingly Matt still comments here even though he's getting absolutely roasted in the replies every time: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=photomatt
Given the comment thread you linked. I feel like photomatt has a very strong stomach. I'm glad I'm not him.
EDIT: I see where your comment is coming from, in that I did say that I thought it was fair to redirect to the essay. My opinion is that it was both fair to redirect to the essay, and fair for HN readers to find that redirect annoying. This all seems pretty civil to me, although some sibling comments do seem to be acting more hurt about it then I would expect.
I think blocking people from a certain community from accessing content, especially when the moderation team at least tries, is an odd approach at best. Why impede me from viewing content on your project just because the community I'm getting refered from has some moderation approaches you don't like?
Because some people have a very thin skin and low emotional maturity despite outstanding brilliance on technical topics: "I've been disrespected by a troll on HN once or twice, therefore HN is full of right wing trolls so I'm gonna block them all as revenge"
Kind of like that Twitter/Reddit/Discord mod who just bans everyone who disagrees with them. Swinging the ban hammer online is their way of fighting back to the social injustice they perceived on and offline, as IRL they're even afraid of making eye contact with the Doordash courier, let alone stand up for themselves in the face of a disagreement or argument, so these types of knee-jerk reactions are their blow-off valve.
See Elon Musk and his behavior online. He might be a genius in some areas, but that doesn't stop him from acting like a spoiled man-child online. A lot of people are like that unfortunately, like a lot, and they should be going to therapy and touching grass not on engaging more on social media.
The truth is, no matter how much good you do, the moment you put yourself out online, you're inevitably gonna have a certain percentage haters, downvotes, and generally rude comments thrown your way, and there's nothing you can do about it except ignore it. It's just inevitable and you can't let that get to you, you can't have a thin skin if you put yourself out online.
Imagine if Linus Torvalds would have rage-quit like that in the 90s every time someone negatively criticized him or his work. OSS devs back then were cut from a different cloth, today everyone's offended by everything.
I don't doubt that people sometimes argue here "unpolotely", though, IMO, the solution is simply not to engage.
Seems like a reasonable explanation why you might feel that way. I similarly haven't noticed that kind of rhetoric but I also haven't delved down into subthreads much
So unless the author shows some proof of that, I'd ignore their claim. Innocent until proven guilty.
In the years i've been on hackernews, not once i've had the feeling even in the slightest that this is the case. This is crazy.