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Asahi Linux's site previously redirected any site with the Referer header set to 'news.ycombinator.com' to google.com. They did this because they believe that H

by pyrox 3y ago

Asahi Linux's site previously redirected any site with the Referer header set to 'news.ycombinator.com' to google.com. They did this because they believe that Hacker News' community fosters a hostile environment, and thus it was blocked. Setting `rel=noreferrer` on an `a` tag means that the browser will not submit this header, thus meaning this sort of redirect will not occur. Also(as per Marcan's Mastodon account), this rel tag has only been added to asahilinux.org links, not any other links on HN. This means that the moderators of HN believe that the commentary that has in the past been quite misinformative should be allowed, and they are deciding to bypass the block that was put in place by the Asahi team. Now, as per https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/110503331622393719 https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/110503331622393719 , they're adding an HTML header to anyone who has submitted a post to HN(or has the submit page in their history), as they have no other way of doing anything, as they no longer have the Referer header.

101011 3y ago
This raises interesting moral questions that I'm not sure I have an answer to. For one, I don't believe this place fosters a hostile environment, although it's definitely a place where people love to tell you how you're technically wrong about something. For another, I would guess that there are a very limited number of websites that would opt into this sort of anti-traffic behavior. Hacker news could certainly choose to honor it, but it also feels within their right to bypass the block. I wonder if there's a sort of middle ground, where HN alerts the user of the redirect that would have occurred, but still shoots the user to the desired location. But now you're getting into user flows and begging the question as to why the redirect is there in the first place. I'd love to know more about the perceived hostility, even reading up on Mastodon left me with more questions than answers.
- sussmannbaka 3y ago
  there is constant transphobia against Asahi contributors on display on this site. Every single article that gets to the frontpage will have dozens of vile posts in the deads and a couple sprinkled inbetween. I’m not sure if HN staff doesn’t care about it, agrees with them or simply isn’t aware. It’s not limited to the Asahi project, either. The site isn’t safe for queer folks.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - judge2020 3y ago
    It seems HN's philosophy is like that of (early) Reddit, where the commenters self-govern and down/flag comments like that - and it seems to be working if they're all dead, right? They're hidden unless you have an account and specifically enable showdead.
  - troad 3y ago
    > there is constant transphobia against Asahi contributors on display on this site Could you be so kind as to link me to an example? People have discussed Marcan's anime alter ego, certainly, but I've never seen anything transphobic in the slightest. Maybe it's all flagged before I get to see it, but I honestly can't figure out what you might even be referring to. I enjoy reading Asahi updates when they come up, so I am unsure how I could be missing something so 'constant'. > It’s not limited to the Asahi project, either. The site isn’t safe for queer folks. As a 'queer person' myself, I find that statement utterly ludicrous and I reject it completely.
    - _cenw 3y ago
      > People have discussed Marcan's anime alter ego This is pure and poor conjecture, just like the rumor (originating on chan boards and KF) that a person close to marcan had faked suicide. Exactly this sort of rumor mill is what is wrong with HN linking to Asahi developers. > As a 'queer person' myself, I find that statement utterly ludicrous and I reject it completely. Are you a cis gay? I remember a few cases where people reached out to have information redacted to dang and it took weeks. While the people mentioned above were digging into private lives. This site absolutely requires you to shut the fuck up about your own life if you are at risk of being turned into a "lolcow" or pedojacked or whatever else these people will come up with. I understand that's not a consideration yet for 'queer people' currently not conscripted to the front of the culture war.
      - troad 3y ago
- troad 3y ago
  > This raises interesting moral questions that I'm not sure I have an answer to. It's not really all that much of a moral conundrum. Marcan's belief - expressed a number of times on his Mastodon - appears to be that he can prevent other people from discussing something, for the sole reason he doesn't want it discussed. It's not a particularly defensible position in an open society. In particular, he is upset that people on Hacker News tend to point out that a contributor on Asahi - Lina - appears to be a computer-generated anime alter ego of Marcan himself. Me, I have absolutely no problem with Marcan having an anime alter ego, but I don't think it's entirely reasonable to expect people to refrain from noticing this and remarking on it. Marcan disagrees, and this is the source of the HN-Marcan rift. (As I've remarked before, I do mind OSS projects listing fake contributors, for both ethical and legal reasons, but that's another discussion.)
  - Manjuuu 3y ago
    > that he can prevent other people from discussing something And again, when some rando says "they want to prevent people from discussing, free speech!" the topic is always the same, they want to be freely racist, homophobic, whatever. Cmon man, just stop.
  - _cenw 3y ago
    You are misunderstanding. You can discuss your conspiracies anywhere you want, just not on a post pointing to the people that have to deal with the fallout of your unfounded conjecture. Also assuming there is a "fake contributor", who cares under which names contributions are split up? The work still got one. Also, it is absolutely not your project, you don't get to demand people show their ID when they write code for a project.
    - troad 3y ago
      > Also assuming there is a "fake contributor", who cares under which names contributions are split up? The work still got one. Also, it is absolutely not your project, you don't get to demand people show their ID when they write code for a project. If I contribute my code to an open source project, then I - as the copyright holder - agree to license my work under an open licence. If I use an OSS project, I am using other people's copyrighted work under an open licence from them. Without that licence, I have no legal basis on which to use that work. Only real people can (currently) hold copyright. If person X writes some code, but the licence (incorrectly) attributes the copyright to person Y, and person Y purports to give me an open licence to use that work, then - crucially - I have no license from the actual copyright holder (person X) to use their work. Until an effective open source license is made, this code is not open source; it is completely proprietary. If person X chooses to sue you for copyright infringement, it is no defence to say that you're using it under a license from person Y, because person Y had no right to give you that licence. This is a major ethical and legal problem. I would be very wary of the Asahi codebase.
- ubermonkey 3y ago
  A key tenet for many people appears to be that they should be able to do whatever is within their rights, but that leaves out the fact that sometimes doing something within your rights makes you an asshole. I see the HN admins failing this moral test.
judge2020 3y ago
Doesn't seem to be applied to older posts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33891197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33891197

by pyrox 3y ago

101011 3y ago

This raises interesting moral questions that I'm not sure I have an answer to. For one, I don't believe this place fosters a hostile environment, although it's definitely a place where people love to tell you how you're technically wrong about something. For another, I would guess that there are a very limited number of websites that would opt into this sort of anti-traffic behavior. Hacker news could certainly choose to honor it, but it also feels within their right to bypass the block. I wonder if there's a sort of middle ground, where HN alerts the user of the redirect that would have occurred, but still shoots the user to the desired location. But now you're getting into user flows and begging the question as to why the redirect is there in the first place. I'd love to know more about the perceived hostility, even reading up on Mastodon left me with more questions than answers.

sussmannbaka 3y ago
there is constant transphobia against Asahi contributors on display on this site. Every single article that gets to the frontpage will have dozens of vile posts in the deads and a couple sprinkled inbetween. I’m not sure if HN staff doesn’t care about it, agrees with them or simply isn’t aware. It’s not limited to the Asahi project, either. The site isn’t safe for queer folks.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- judge2020 3y ago
  It seems HN's philosophy is like that of (early) Reddit, where the commenters self-govern and down/flag comments like that - and it seems to be working if they're all dead, right? They're hidden unless you have an account and specifically enable showdead.
- troad 3y ago
  > there is constant transphobia against Asahi contributors on display on this site Could you be so kind as to link me to an example? People have discussed Marcan's anime alter ego, certainly, but I've never seen anything transphobic in the slightest. Maybe it's all flagged before I get to see it, but I honestly can't figure out what you might even be referring to. I enjoy reading Asahi updates when they come up, so I am unsure how I could be missing something so 'constant'. > It’s not limited to the Asahi project, either. The site isn’t safe for queer folks. As a 'queer person' myself, I find that statement utterly ludicrous and I reject it completely.
  - _cenw 3y ago
    > People have discussed Marcan's anime alter ego This is pure and poor conjecture, just like the rumor (originating on chan boards and KF) that a person close to marcan had faked suicide. Exactly this sort of rumor mill is what is wrong with HN linking to Asahi developers. > As a 'queer person' myself, I find that statement utterly ludicrous and I reject it completely. Are you a cis gay? I remember a few cases where people reached out to have information redacted to dang and it took weeks. While the people mentioned above were digging into private lives. This site absolutely requires you to shut the fuck up about your own life if you are at risk of being turned into a "lolcow" or pedojacked or whatever else these people will come up with. I understand that's not a consideration yet for 'queer people' currently not conscripted to the front of the culture war.
    - troad 3y ago
troad 3y ago
> This raises interesting moral questions that I'm not sure I have an answer to. It's not really all that much of a moral conundrum. Marcan's belief - expressed a number of times on his Mastodon - appears to be that he can prevent other people from discussing something, for the sole reason he doesn't want it discussed. It's not a particularly defensible position in an open society. In particular, he is upset that people on Hacker News tend to point out that a contributor on Asahi - Lina - appears to be a computer-generated anime alter ego of Marcan himself. Me, I have absolutely no problem with Marcan having an anime alter ego, but I don't think it's entirely reasonable to expect people to refrain from noticing this and remarking on it. Marcan disagrees, and this is the source of the HN-Marcan rift. (As I've remarked before, I do mind OSS projects listing fake contributors, for both ethical and legal reasons, but that's another discussion.)
- Manjuuu 3y ago
  > that he can prevent other people from discussing something And again, when some rando says "they want to prevent people from discussing, free speech!" the topic is always the same, they want to be freely racist, homophobic, whatever. Cmon man, just stop.
- _cenw 3y ago
  You are misunderstanding. You can discuss your conspiracies anywhere you want, just not on a post pointing to the people that have to deal with the fallout of your unfounded conjecture. Also assuming there is a "fake contributor", who cares under which names contributions are split up? The work still got one. Also, it is absolutely not your project, you don't get to demand people show their ID when they write code for a project.
  - troad 3y ago
    > Also assuming there is a "fake contributor", who cares under which names contributions are split up? The work still got one. Also, it is absolutely not your project, you don't get to demand people show their ID when they write code for a project. If I contribute my code to an open source project, then I - as the copyright holder - agree to license my work under an open licence. If I use an OSS project, I am using other people's copyrighted work under an open licence from them. Without that licence, I have no legal basis on which to use that work. Only real people can (currently) hold copyright. If person X writes some code, but the licence (incorrectly) attributes the copyright to person Y, and person Y purports to give me an open licence to use that work, then - crucially - I have no license from the actual copyright holder (person X) to use their work. Until an effective open source license is made, this code is not open source; it is completely proprietary. If person X chooses to sue you for copyright infringement, it is no defence to say that you're using it under a license from person Y, because person Y had no right to give you that licence. This is a major ethical and legal problem. I would be very wary of the Asahi codebase.
ubermonkey 3y ago
A key tenet for many people appears to be that they should be able to do whatever is within their rights, but that leaves out the fact that sometimes doing something within your rights makes you an asshole. I see the HN admins failing this moral test.

judge2020 3y ago

Doesn't seem to be applied to older posts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33891197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33891197