That discussion and similar discussions that seems to come up regularly was probably the reason they don't want HN traffic, and it's unfortunate the the moderators here haven't worked harder to shut that stuff down. The gender of their developers just isn't relevant to the quality of their work.
That's really surprising. I've been on HN a while now and I've never noticed that type of comment. The reason I'm on HN at all is that it reminds me of the "old internet" where people posted links and discussed stuff. You're always gonna get someone saying stuff you don't like, but banning all of HN considering how decent the 99.9% is.. is odd. It's not 4chan.
Well, you just didn't look hard enough, this is from literally the last thread about Asahi before this one. Pretty much every single post about Asahi Linux on HN has transphobic comments.
That's from a newly made account (green name), and it's flagged so it's not visible to most users (including me). There's no forum in the world with open sign ups that can prevent a few assholes from joining.
Can you find me a single HN comment on this topic that states (or even implies) that the gender of a developer is relevant to the quality of their work?
Because I haven't seen anything like that, so you seem to be attacking a strawthem.
Anyone who actually cares about Asahi Linux knows who Asahi Lina is. If it is actually intended to be a secret it is one of the worst kept secrets I can think of.
Maybe it has changed since the project was launched, and moderation has been applied. I remember lots and lots of "what's the point?" and "it's a shame your efforts are wasted" sentiments, and "apple is just going to snap their fingers and shut this down one day".
They've already thought about these things and it's still what they chose to work on, so I can understand them blocking a contributing source of those comments.
That being said, I agree the more recent threads have more positivity than negativity so that's good.