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I always roll my eyes when HN falls for interviews with "random engineer or product person responsible for [feature]", as if that automatically confers authorit

I always roll my eyes when HN falls for interviews with "random engineer or product person responsible for [feature]", as if that automatically confers authority like they're Richard Stallman or Tim Berners-Lee. Combining the fact that they have nothing insightful to say with the ego boost from being interviewed in visible articles means that people like this are going to say whatever they think will provide a punchy, clickbait headline for the less-discerning members of link boards to feed their biases with. The only notable thing here is how hard HN falls for drivel like this.

fourthark 7y ago
For me, the motivation is that it's interesting to see someone grapple with the consequences of their work. This guy is clearly no guru. And the sensationalism of the title is just media being media.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  Yea, I think that's definitely an interesting thing to see in action. But what I'm pushing back against is the notion that this person's perspective is all that valuable: he doesn't even appear to have been that heavily involved in the feature. The point is that _Buzzfeed knows that_, and they know that this is just a lazy piece for a slow news day, that will be clicked on and shared by the more thoughtless parts of the Internet. I definitely wouldn't be making this comment were the article about @jack, or someone else that Buzzfeed could make the case was responsible for the design and development of Twitter early and over time.
redwards510 7y ago
Why do you say "HN" is falling for it? Hacker News did not write the article. Buzzfeed did. We're simply commenting on it.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  I'm not sure I understand this comment at all. Buzzfeed is the one writing the clickbait. Obviously they would not be the ones falling for anything. HN, collectively, put this article on the front page, treating shallow nonsense as if it's notable because it feeds our biases. It's a data point that speaks ill of the collective discernment abilities of HN (and the quality of the community) that we put content-free clickbait on the front page and discuss it as if it's valuable (or more accurately, use it as a fig leaf for soapboxing preexisting views). This isn't some generalized "HN is full of dumb low-effort takes and clickbait" complaint; I got used to that years and years ago. But part of being on an online forum is pushing back against stuff like this and calling out low quality content when we see it.

fourthark 7y ago

For me, the motivation is that it's interesting to see someone grapple with the consequences of their work. This guy is clearly no guru. And the sensationalism of the title is just media being media.

wutbrodo 7y ago
Yea, I think that's definitely an interesting thing to see in action. But what I'm pushing back against is the notion that this person's perspective is all that valuable: he doesn't even appear to have been that heavily involved in the feature. The point is that _Buzzfeed knows that_, and they know that this is just a lazy piece for a slow news day, that will be clicked on and shared by the more thoughtless parts of the Internet. I definitely wouldn't be making this comment were the article about @jack, or someone else that Buzzfeed could make the case was responsible for the design and development of Twitter early and over time.

redwards510 7y ago

Why do you say "HN" is falling for it? Hacker News did not write the article. Buzzfeed did. We're simply commenting on it.

wutbrodo 7y ago
I'm not sure I understand this comment at all. Buzzfeed is the one writing the clickbait. Obviously they would not be the ones falling for anything. HN, collectively, put this article on the front page, treating shallow nonsense as if it's notable because it feeds our biases. It's a data point that speaks ill of the collective discernment abilities of HN (and the quality of the community) that we put content-free clickbait on the front page and discuss it as if it's valuable (or more accurately, use it as a fig leaf for soapboxing preexisting views). This isn't some generalized "HN is full of dumb low-effort takes and clickbait" complaint; I got used to that years and years ago. But part of being on an online forum is pushing back against stuff like this and calling out low quality content when we see it.