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At first, the site attracted about sixteen hundred daily visitors, and Graham moderated and maintained it himself. Today, around five million people read Hacker

At first, the site attracted about sixteen hundred daily visitors, and Graham moderated and maintained it himself. Today, around five million people read Hacker News each month, and it’s grown more difficult to moderate. The technical discussions remain varied and can be insightful. But social, cultural, and political conversations, which, despite the guidelines, have proliferated, tend to devolve. A recent comment thread about a Times article, “YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views,” yielded a response likening journalism and propaganda; a muddled juxtaposition of pornography and Holocaust denial; a vague side conversation about the average I.Q. of Hacker News commenters; and confused analogies between white supremacists and Black Lives Matter activists. In April, when a story about Katie Bouman, an M.I.T. researcher who helped develop a technology that captured the first photo of a black hole, rose to the front page, users combed through her code on GitHub in an effort to undermine the weight of her contributions. The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative—often masks a deeper recklessness. Ill-advised citations proliferate; thought experiments abound; humane arguments are dismissed as emotional or irrational. Logic, applied narrowly, is used to justify broad moral positions. The most admired arguments are made with data, but the origins, veracity, and malleability of those data tend to be ancillary concerns. The message-board intellectualism that might once have impressed V.C. observers like Graham has developed into an intellectual style all its own. Hacker News readers who visit the site to learn how engineers and entrepreneurs talk, and what they talk about, can find themselves immersed in conversations that resemble the output of duelling Markov bots trained on libertarian economics blogs, “The Tim Ferriss Show,” and the work of Yuval Noah Harari. Not sure whether to agree or disagree.

madhadron 7y ago
That sounds like the Hacker News that I know. It's worth trawling through the comments because you get gems among the dross, but it should be a trawl.
pdwcyl 7y ago
I find that the opposite is true. Most comments are emotional, and I have to search for controversial comments to find anything objective/worth reading. Like Reddit, this site is biased to the political left (USA). I wish we could just avoid all politics in tech.
- cyphar 7y ago
  I don't think it's possible to avoid politics in any profession. Teachers care about education reform, which is a political subject. Doctors care about the healthcare system, which is a political subject. Civil engineers care about building codes and safety regulations, which are political subjects. Accountants care about tax laws, which are an incredibly political subject. Social workers care about welfare programs, which is also a very political subject. You might not talk about it in the realm of politics while at work, but it has an impact on your work as well as the lives of the public. You could even argue that being "apolitical" actually means that your political opinion is that the status quo is acceptable, which other people may disagree with. For instance, some people believe that selling water is unethical because it's a basic human need which you should always have free access to -- saying that the status quo is acceptable means that you don't think that for-sale water is unethical. There's nothing wrong with that opinion, but it is an opinion (and a political one at that).
  - DeathArrow 7y ago
    I don't express my political beliefs here because I think I would be massively down voted. I think that's true for lots of other users.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - Kye 7y ago
      The way it's presented makes a huge difference. People are obliterated for any political opinion if presented in a way that treats politics like a game instead of something that affects everyone. Make a polite, clear-headed enough argument for something like eugenics and people will upvote you. It's troubling, but I can make a pro-socialism post under the same conditions. It's an uneasy peace.
  - thulecitizen 7y ago
    > You could even argue that being "apolitical" actually means that your political opinion is that the status quo is acceptable I agree with this. I see Cultural Hegemony (domination-justification stories) being very strong in unexpected places. Family members or close friends who indirectly benefit from the artificial scarcity mechanisms (in SV especially Intellectual Property) that make up the various social class realities of rentier capitalism [1]. What seperates me and a mother of three in Bangladesh, who is getting paid starvation wages making the designer clothes I wear [2], is that I was lucky enough to have been born in the global North, in an upper-middle class family. I was able to grow up on the inside of the fort, and benefit from a rich inheritance [3]. [1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corruption-capitalism-guy-standing/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corru... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaGp5_Sfbss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaGp5_Sfbss [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGnDDhco4gw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGnDDhco4gw
tmpaccount1221 7y ago
>The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative—often masks a deeper recklessness. Ill-advised citations proliferate; thought experiments abound; humane arguments are dismissed as emotional or irrational. Logic, applied narrowly, is used to justify broad moral positions. The most admired arguments are made with data, but the origins, veracity, and malleability of those data tend to be ancillary concerns. Ah yes, I remember this article. Oddly enough, this is a major reason why I still enjoy browsing HN. There are few places left that cover a variety of topics while also encouraging this open style of discussion.
- riedel 7y ago
  Would still be interesting if someone could train language / interaction model on different years of hacker news to see how a certain topic would be discussed differently over the years.
  - filoeleven 7y ago
    Neat idea. HN explicitly allows reposts of older links after some time, so you would be able to see how discussion of literally the same article has changed in some cases.
- api 7y ago
  Another reason IMHO that this site has maintained its relative quality is the policy of effectively banning memes (whether textual or visual) and not embedding images from links or allowing them to be attached. Someone needs to do a deep cognitive study of how memes, especially in image form, affect cognition during discourse. Whatever is going on it seems obvious that their presence immediately reverts people to a juvenile junior high level of discussion at best. They also seem to lead to the development of this kind of obscure signaling culture hive mind. I don't even know how to describe it. In Star Trek TNG they called it the "borg songs," the sort of emotional-cultural carrier wave that pervaded the Borg collective. Meme-dominated sites like 4chan immediately turn me off. I find that whole style creepy and culty and gross and it feels like some kind of soft mind control technique. I felt this way long before 4chan became "Stormfront for nerds," but the fact that this style if discourse would create an environment compatible with that way of thinking doesn't shock me at all.
Kye 7y ago
I think the view is accurate from high enough, but experience depends a lot on some element that's probably time and possibly the alignment of the planets. You can tell when Mercury is in Gatorade. Sometimes people are really cool. Sometimes people are fools. The fools make good points sometimes. The cool people can be the worst. The roles are fluid. I've had my fool moments. dang, who I assume is a cyborg driven by several different mods, generally makes good calls. There aren't many places online where I feel like I can point out a problem to the mods and not worry about being called an idiot. Or banned.
hattori 7y ago
Amount of 'smart sounding' and trigger words that are shoveled into this block of cra..text to semi-insult people is the exact reason I'm reading HN and practically nothing else online.

madhadron 7y ago

That sounds like the Hacker News that I know. It's worth trawling through the comments because you get gems among the dross, but it should be a trawl.

pdwcyl 7y ago

I find that the opposite is true. Most comments are emotional, and I have to search for controversial comments to find anything objective/worth reading. Like Reddit, this site is biased to the political left (USA). I wish we could just avoid all politics in tech.

cyphar 7y ago
I don't think it's possible to avoid politics in any profession. Teachers care about education reform, which is a political subject. Doctors care about the healthcare system, which is a political subject. Civil engineers care about building codes and safety regulations, which are political subjects. Accountants care about tax laws, which are an incredibly political subject. Social workers care about welfare programs, which is also a very political subject. You might not talk about it in the realm of politics while at work, but it has an impact on your work as well as the lives of the public. You could even argue that being "apolitical" actually means that your political opinion is that the status quo is acceptable, which other people may disagree with. For instance, some people believe that selling water is unethical because it's a basic human need which you should always have free access to -- saying that the status quo is acceptable means that you don't think that for-sale water is unethical. There's nothing wrong with that opinion, but it is an opinion (and a political one at that).
- DeathArrow 7y ago
  I don't express my political beliefs here because I think I would be massively down voted. I think that's true for lots of other users.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kye 7y ago
    The way it's presented makes a huge difference. People are obliterated for any political opinion if presented in a way that treats politics like a game instead of something that affects everyone. Make a polite, clear-headed enough argument for something like eugenics and people will upvote you. It's troubling, but I can make a pro-socialism post under the same conditions. It's an uneasy peace.
- thulecitizen 7y ago
  > You could even argue that being "apolitical" actually means that your political opinion is that the status quo is acceptable I agree with this. I see Cultural Hegemony (domination-justification stories) being very strong in unexpected places. Family members or close friends who indirectly benefit from the artificial scarcity mechanisms (in SV especially Intellectual Property) that make up the various social class realities of rentier capitalism [1]. What seperates me and a mother of three in Bangladesh, who is getting paid starvation wages making the designer clothes I wear [2], is that I was lucky enough to have been born in the global North, in an upper-middle class family. I was able to grow up on the inside of the fort, and benefit from a rich inheritance [3]. [1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corruption-capitalism-guy-standing/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corru... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaGp5_Sfbss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaGp5_Sfbss [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGnDDhco4gw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGnDDhco4gw

tmpaccount1221 7y ago

>The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative—often masks a deeper recklessness. Ill-advised citations proliferate; thought experiments abound; humane arguments are dismissed as emotional or irrational. Logic, applied narrowly, is used to justify broad moral positions. The most admired arguments are made with data, but the origins, veracity, and malleability of those data tend to be ancillary concerns. Ah yes, I remember this article. Oddly enough, this is a major reason why I still enjoy browsing HN. There are few places left that cover a variety of topics while also encouraging this open style of discussion.

riedel 7y ago
Would still be interesting if someone could train language / interaction model on different years of hacker news to see how a certain topic would be discussed differently over the years.
- filoeleven 7y ago
  Neat idea. HN explicitly allows reposts of older links after some time, so you would be able to see how discussion of literally the same article has changed in some cases.
api 7y ago
Another reason IMHO that this site has maintained its relative quality is the policy of effectively banning memes (whether textual or visual) and not embedding images from links or allowing them to be attached. Someone needs to do a deep cognitive study of how memes, especially in image form, affect cognition during discourse. Whatever is going on it seems obvious that their presence immediately reverts people to a juvenile junior high level of discussion at best. They also seem to lead to the development of this kind of obscure signaling culture hive mind. I don't even know how to describe it. In Star Trek TNG they called it the "borg songs," the sort of emotional-cultural carrier wave that pervaded the Borg collective. Meme-dominated sites like 4chan immediately turn me off. I find that whole style creepy and culty and gross and it feels like some kind of soft mind control technique. I felt this way long before 4chan became "Stormfront for nerds," but the fact that this style if discourse would create an environment compatible with that way of thinking doesn't shock me at all.

Kye 7y ago

I think the view is accurate from high enough, but experience depends a lot on some element that's probably time and possibly the alignment of the planets. You can tell when Mercury is in Gatorade. Sometimes people are really cool. Sometimes people are fools. The fools make good points sometimes. The cool people can be the worst. The roles are fluid. I've had my fool moments. dang, who I assume is a cyborg driven by several different mods, generally makes good calls. There aren't many places online where I feel like I can point out a problem to the mods and not worry about being called an idiot. Or banned.

hattori 7y ago

Amount of 'smart sounding' and trigger words that are shoveled into this block of cra..text to semi-insult people is the exact reason I'm reading HN and practically nothing else online.