For anyone who wonders why HN mods are overly strict, then note that Kuro5hin tolerated trolls and they utterly destroyed the site. It doesn't exist any more.

It had limped along until a year or so back when the server finally fell over.

The domain is parked now.

But yeah, the trolls pretty much ruined it, life lesson. Rusty turned up running a Mastodon instance, though I haven't seen him for a few months.

The change in direction of content of kuro5hin, is that the trolls you refer to?

I just visited sporadically and noticed focus drifted from tech related and interesting to political and sometimes into conspiracy theory areas around the time when I stopped visiting.

Not OP, but that was a significant part of it, yes.

Both the quality / topic of posts, and of discussion, faded quickly.

Same happened to usenet. Too much noise.

Oh Kuro5hin. I miss blixco.