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I think human conversations at scale with strangers is inherently difficult to solve. We are prone to quick, context-life reactions. Threading management only

I think human conversations at scale with strangers is inherently difficult to solve. We are prone to quick, context-life reactions. Threading management only gets you so far…

aloisdg 7y ago
HN, Reddit and most newsgroups are not so bad.
- onion2k 7y ago
  HN has an appalling reputation outside of HN. People refer to it as "the evil orange website". EDIT: It's "angry orange website", not "evil orange website". Not so bad after all.
  - oblio 7y ago
    Honest question: which people? HN is too US/California/Bay Area centric for my tastes (most people here are probably from there), it talks a bit too much about money and jobs, but it's still a decent resource.
    - onion2k 7y ago
      I was wrong about the name. It's "the angry orange website". https://twitter.com/search?q="angry%20orange%20website" https://twitter.com/search?q="angry%20orange%20website" - that's just a sample of HN's 'haters'. HN has its share of people who are awful and post horrible opinions (see the discussion about any article on JavaScript, health care, wealth, etc). I believe HN has some value left which is why I still post here, but I can absolutely see why people have abandoned it, and I certainly don't talk about HN with people in real life.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - kprjo 7y ago
        I wonder why they call it that. After all you get banned here if you post right-wing opinions. It's practically a safe space for them.
        astrange 7y ago
        HN has a pretty cynical viewpoint on everything. A comment doesn't really feel like a contribution when you're writing it unless you disagree with the parent (like so). People will find all sorts of reasons to think the article is wrong based on "mid-brow dismissal" or will say any public figure or company is lying about any statement they make. Plus there's no emojis.
        kprjo 7y ago
        Yeah, on the other hand Twitter is all roses, and those people always side with public figures and companies, lol. Maybe those guys would like HN better if they could use avatars so they could show off their black lipstick and half-shaved heads.
        onion2k 7y ago
        This is exactly the sort of unreasonable and irrational angry generalization that makes people call HN "the angry orange website".
        dang 7y ago
        In that case you're judging HN by trolls, since that is one we've banned dozens of times.
        astrange 7y ago
        This is not a mid-brow dismissal for once. Instead it's "boomer mindset", which you usually only see in newspaper comment sections. A rarity!
        clydethefrog 7y ago
        You mean roses as in the symbol of the social democratic movement? Why would these people support companies?
      - asdff 7y ago
        Pretty funny that the sources of horrible caustic opinions are health, wealth, and javascript. We really are the nerds.
      - dang 7y ago
        It's a popular sport in a few Twitter circles to highlight the worst things that appear on HN. The best fish are the ones you pull out of the (orange) water when they are freshly posted—i.e. when there hasn't been enough time yet for the community to downvote or flag them, or for moderators to intervene. The worst comments end up flagged and moderated (which is why the Twitterers tend to post screenshots without links, since by the time most readers click on a link, it will take them to something that says [flagged], or has a moderator reply saying we ban people who post like this—not much sport in that). The rest mostly end up with highly-upvoted refutations. So these things aren't representative of the community, but they do show up. These are all consequences of HN's fundamental structure. It's a public, optionally-anonymous forum, so we can't control what gets posted. All we or the community can do is react after it has been posted. That takes time. Even if we ban someone, they can just create a new account in 30 seconds, and plenty do. Most importantly, HN doesn't have silos, where users follow what they like and block what they dislike. Rather, everybody sees the same material. That means every one of us is more likely to notice stuff that we dislike. This leads to negative impressions, often painfully strong ones. The odd thing is, fundamentally, a non-siloed site is arguably objectively healthier: at least we are all in the same room. But it doesn't feel that way. It can be extremely painful to be in the same room with people saying horrible things one doesn't normally come near. In fact, I wonder whether for some users there may actually be no place other than HN where that regularly happens. Inevitably, the negative impressions get attached to HN itself, since none of these dynamics are at all obvious. That explains why people have such contradictory views of HN—see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19927454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19927454 in this very thread. They are drawing conclusions from different sets of painful impressions. I'd love to find new ways to mitigate these downsides. We've worked on that for years already, yet I feel like the most we've managed to do is scratch a couple of crude gouges into a boulder. But let's remember that HN's structure has upside consequences too. There's no barrier to entry, so literally anyone can jump in. Wonderful things come from that. The absence of silos means people are talking and relating to people they would not otherwise come into contact with. These are precious things which are easy to forget amid the pressure we all feel. The upsides and downsides come from the same root: deep tradeoffs in the original choices of how to set up a place like this. As it grows and as the energy becomes more intense, the tradeoffs show up in ways that are increasingly difficult to bridge.
  - test1235 7y ago
    Outside where? I don't think I've ever seen HN mentioned anywhere except maybe Reddit, when people are asking for recommendations.
- cjslep 7y ago
  The low quality of Reddit-think slips into the workplace all the time. If it isn't a debate about semantics (the lowest form of argument, "well this word also means..." Etc) it's a debate about the second lowest form (the form/framing of an argument, "that's a reductionist argument..." Etc), and when I challenge said co-workers on this ("what kind of reductionism? So what if it's reductionist? Don't assume I believe in Kant's first formulation of the categorical imperative which you use" etc) I get silence as a response because this kind of archetype persona also cannot admit when they are wrong, or want to keep using these techniques as a self-defense mechanism and substitute for their own thought. And they'd rather not continue to have a good faith argument with me at a higher level, because I can get rough around the edges when people pull this nonsense on me. I find it incredibly frustrating. It's a lot of energy spent on my part and I get no actual debate. No matter how civil I try to be about the whole thing.
  - Veen 7y ago
    > Don't assume I believe in Kant's first formulation of the categorical imperative which you use Your co-workers must be very different to the people I come across in my work.
    - cjslep 7y ago
      It's actually quite simple: do you take something I said and try to extend it to an absurd use case, to show how such a viewpoint cannot be true? This is that universality formulation in action. Quick example: I said not vaccinating is risking death, and someone else said I shouldn't drive because that risk of death is higher. That's all it takes!
- Mizza 7y ago
  HN is great because of the strict moderation. If there are any good subreddits left, it's because they're well moderated. Some of it is cultural and demographic, but I think moderation is really the key missing piece in all of these conversations about "why does the internet suck now?" Want to build a better Twitter alternative? Train the moderation AI: No memes, no reposts, no shitposts.
rjf72 7y ago
The pink elephant there is profit. Discussion with strangers is not difficult to solve. Even going back to AOL style topic driven chat rooms, which are just a step above IRC, it all worked just fine. BBS style systems also worked phenomenally well. But now enter companies wanting to make a buck. And that's where all the stupidity comes into play. Because now you need to people to disproportionately be exposed to e.g. advertisers, and to keep the advertisers around you also probably need to stop people from really speaking their mind about them: 'This movie sucks.' 'Yeah, drink this fizzy corn fructose laden crap and get fat. Woot!' So you end up with shilling, 'moderation', and other mechanisms to try to help ease monetization. This, in turn, rapidly drives division, antagonism, and trolling. And so the corporate site needs to push even harder to maintain their advertising venue. Which results in an ever downward spiral. And on top of all of this now you don't just need people to chat. You need for them to stay actively 'engaged' with your 'platform.' Those big buck advertisers aren't going to pay you to advertise to your 500 users. So now enter things like voting systems. Opaque manipulation means you can help drive discussion however you want, and you can simultaneously help addict users by giving them that tiny little dopamine bump each time they see 'oh wow, i got more imaginary internet points! herpa derp!' Hey what do you know, these voting systems are somehow driving the creation of increasingly radicalized little echo chambers. Yeah man, but look how engaged they are! It's all quite idiotic, but this derives from the fact that the problem is not enabling chat, the problem is enabling chat while making money off of it.
- asdff 7y ago
  It's all about keeping you on the platform for as long as possible. Are twitter threads difficult to follow, is the facebook feed tough to get through now that its algorithmic? Absolutely, and that's by design. An advertiser would hate this site. Look how quickly you can skim a thread. You can get away with checking this site once a day and stay current with it. The longer you are on a site, the more ads can be served your way, the more money the site makes from advertisers. Platforms are concerned about maximizing friction to the point just before they loose you and your valuable eyes as a frustrated user.

I think human conversations at scale with strangers is inherently difficult to solve. We are prone to quick, context-life reactions. Threading management only gets you so far…

aloisdg 7y ago

HN, Reddit and most newsgroups are not so bad.

onion2k 7y ago
HN has an appalling reputation outside of HN. People refer to it as "the evil orange website". EDIT: It's "angry orange website", not "evil orange website". Not so bad after all.
- oblio 7y ago
  Honest question: which people? HN is too US/California/Bay Area centric for my tastes (most people here are probably from there), it talks a bit too much about money and jobs, but it's still a decent resource.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    I was wrong about the name. It's "the angry orange website". https://twitter.com/search?q="angry%20orange%20website" https://twitter.com/search?q="angry%20orange%20website" - that's just a sample of HN's 'haters'. HN has its share of people who are awful and post horrible opinions (see the discussion about any article on JavaScript, health care, wealth, etc). I believe HN has some value left which is why I still post here, but I can absolutely see why people have abandoned it, and I certainly don't talk about HN with people in real life.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - kprjo 7y ago
      I wonder why they call it that. After all you get banned here if you post right-wing opinions. It's practically a safe space for them.
      - astrange 7y ago
        HN has a pretty cynical viewpoint on everything. A comment doesn't really feel like a contribution when you're writing it unless you disagree with the parent (like so). People will find all sorts of reasons to think the article is wrong based on "mid-brow dismissal" or will say any public figure or company is lying about any statement they make. Plus there's no emojis.
        kprjo 7y ago
        Yeah, on the other hand Twitter is all roses, and those people always side with public figures and companies, lol. Maybe those guys would like HN better if they could use avatars so they could show off their black lipstick and half-shaved heads.
        onion2k 7y ago
        This is exactly the sort of unreasonable and irrational angry generalization that makes people call HN "the angry orange website".
        dang 7y ago
        In that case you're judging HN by trolls, since that is one we've banned dozens of times.
        astrange 7y ago
        This is not a mid-brow dismissal for once. Instead it's "boomer mindset", which you usually only see in newspaper comment sections. A rarity!
        clydethefrog 7y ago
        You mean roses as in the symbol of the social democratic movement? Why would these people support companies?
    - asdff 7y ago
      Pretty funny that the sources of horrible caustic opinions are health, wealth, and javascript. We really are the nerds.
    - dang 7y ago
      It's a popular sport in a few Twitter circles to highlight the worst things that appear on HN. The best fish are the ones you pull out of the (orange) water when they are freshly posted—i.e. when there hasn't been enough time yet for the community to downvote or flag them, or for moderators to intervene. The worst comments end up flagged and moderated (which is why the Twitterers tend to post screenshots without links, since by the time most readers click on a link, it will take them to something that says [flagged], or has a moderator reply saying we ban people who post like this—not much sport in that). The rest mostly end up with highly-upvoted refutations. So these things aren't representative of the community, but they do show up. These are all consequences of HN's fundamental structure. It's a public, optionally-anonymous forum, so we can't control what gets posted. All we or the community can do is react after it has been posted. That takes time. Even if we ban someone, they can just create a new account in 30 seconds, and plenty do. Most importantly, HN doesn't have silos, where users follow what they like and block what they dislike. Rather, everybody sees the same material. That means every one of us is more likely to notice stuff that we dislike. This leads to negative impressions, often painfully strong ones. The odd thing is, fundamentally, a non-siloed site is arguably objectively healthier: at least we are all in the same room. But it doesn't feel that way. It can be extremely painful to be in the same room with people saying horrible things one doesn't normally come near. In fact, I wonder whether for some users there may actually be no place other than HN where that regularly happens. Inevitably, the negative impressions get attached to HN itself, since none of these dynamics are at all obvious. That explains why people have such contradictory views of HN—see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19927454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19927454 in this very thread. They are drawing conclusions from different sets of painful impressions. I'd love to find new ways to mitigate these downsides. We've worked on that for years already, yet I feel like the most we've managed to do is scratch a couple of crude gouges into a boulder. But let's remember that HN's structure has upside consequences too. There's no barrier to entry, so literally anyone can jump in. Wonderful things come from that. The absence of silos means people are talking and relating to people they would not otherwise come into contact with. These are precious things which are easy to forget amid the pressure we all feel. The upsides and downsides come from the same root: deep tradeoffs in the original choices of how to set up a place like this. As it grows and as the energy becomes more intense, the tradeoffs show up in ways that are increasingly difficult to bridge.
- test1235 7y ago
  Outside where? I don't think I've ever seen HN mentioned anywhere except maybe Reddit, when people are asking for recommendations.
cjslep 7y ago
The low quality of Reddit-think slips into the workplace all the time. If it isn't a debate about semantics (the lowest form of argument, "well this word also means..." Etc) it's a debate about the second lowest form (the form/framing of an argument, "that's a reductionist argument..." Etc), and when I challenge said co-workers on this ("what kind of reductionism? So what if it's reductionist? Don't assume I believe in Kant's first formulation of the categorical imperative which you use" etc) I get silence as a response because this kind of archetype persona also cannot admit when they are wrong, or want to keep using these techniques as a self-defense mechanism and substitute for their own thought. And they'd rather not continue to have a good faith argument with me at a higher level, because I can get rough around the edges when people pull this nonsense on me. I find it incredibly frustrating. It's a lot of energy spent on my part and I get no actual debate. No matter how civil I try to be about the whole thing.
- Veen 7y ago
  > Don't assume I believe in Kant's first formulation of the categorical imperative which you use Your co-workers must be very different to the people I come across in my work.
  - cjslep 7y ago
    It's actually quite simple: do you take something I said and try to extend it to an absurd use case, to show how such a viewpoint cannot be true? This is that universality formulation in action. Quick example: I said not vaccinating is risking death, and someone else said I shouldn't drive because that risk of death is higher. That's all it takes!
Mizza 7y ago
HN is great because of the strict moderation. If there are any good subreddits left, it's because they're well moderated. Some of it is cultural and demographic, but I think moderation is really the key missing piece in all of these conversations about "why does the internet suck now?" Want to build a better Twitter alternative? Train the moderation AI: No memes, no reposts, no shitposts.

rjf72 7y ago

The pink elephant there is profit. Discussion with strangers is not difficult to solve. Even going back to AOL style topic driven chat rooms, which are just a step above IRC, it all worked just fine. BBS style systems also worked phenomenally well. But now enter companies wanting to make a buck. And that's where all the stupidity comes into play. Because now you need to people to disproportionately be exposed to e.g. advertisers, and to keep the advertisers around you also probably need to stop people from really speaking their mind about them: 'This movie sucks.' 'Yeah, drink this fizzy corn fructose laden crap and get fat. Woot!' So you end up with shilling, 'moderation', and other mechanisms to try to help ease monetization. This, in turn, rapidly drives division, antagonism, and trolling. And so the corporate site needs to push even harder to maintain their advertising venue. Which results in an ever downward spiral. And on top of all of this now you don't just need people to chat. You need for them to stay actively 'engaged' with your 'platform.' Those big buck advertisers aren't going to pay you to advertise to your 500 users. So now enter things like voting systems. Opaque manipulation means you can help drive discussion however you want, and you can simultaneously help addict users by giving them that tiny little dopamine bump each time they see 'oh wow, i got more imaginary internet points! herpa derp!' Hey what do you know, these voting systems are somehow driving the creation of increasingly radicalized little echo chambers. Yeah man, but look how engaged they are! It's all quite idiotic, but this derives from the fact that the problem is not enabling chat, the problem is enabling chat while making money off of it.

asdff 7y ago
It's all about keeping you on the platform for as long as possible. Are twitter threads difficult to follow, is the facebook feed tough to get through now that its algorithmic? Absolutely, and that's by design. An advertiser would hate this site. Look how quickly you can skim a thread. You can get away with checking this site once a day and stay current with it. The longer you are on a site, the more ads can be served your way, the more money the site makes from advertisers. Platforms are concerned about maximizing friction to the point just before they loose you and your valuable eyes as a frustrated user.