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I don't know how Hacker News manages to stay so pure, given that it's run by venture capitalists, yet still remains free of ads and open to newcomers. Monetisin

I don't know how Hacker News manages to stay so pure, given that it's run by venture capitalists, yet still remains free of ads and open to newcomers. Monetising CS is like demanding a signup fee to join HN: it will drastically change the community.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
MattGaiser 6y ago
Hacker News is smaller than most major subreddits in terms of usage. 400 upvotes is considered a lot here. The site is extremely simple and something that could be replicated in a couple of days at most by most engineers. It doesn't process money or really require a lot of content moderation either.
- freddie_mercury 6y ago
  That is all true but the real answer is that it is run as a charity project by billionaires. So it doesn't need to be monetized.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    They probably source enough engineers on here to make it more bait rather than charity.
    - bigiain 6y ago
      There are very few billionaire charity projects that don't have some kind of bait stench associated with them... This site is a lot less brazen that, say the Gates Foundation or Jack Dorseys "all the strings attached" charity "donations", but there's no doubt it's run in the interests of YC and they're doing it for the benefits they get. Not that I begrudge them that. It just needs to be something you bear in mind when wondering about odd looking article rankings or apparent voting/submission patterns that evade the fraud detection... It's their space, they can do that if they want. I (and everyone else) needs to weight up the benefit to themselves against the benefit to the people in control, and determine whether to hang around here, or walk away. For me? They do an OK job of not taking too m much advantage of their ultimate power here. I'm mostly cool with them.
  - bcassedy 6y ago
    Ehh there's a really pro ycombinator slant and ever notice how any yc announcement, hiring notice, or article quickly hits the top? They're getting a lot of value out of that stuff that helps with the VC side of things.
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      Who would hate on YCombinator?
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        There are some legitimate arguments about how VC backed startups have behaved as of late, and YC is part of that overall system. I’m not sure where I personally sit, but I think it’s a bit silly to pretend that YC is universally beloved or beyond reproach.
        MattGaiser 6y ago
        I did not think it was universally beloved, but just never read any negative viewpoint about them so was curious.
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        Keep in mind that YC is very visible. As a result, complaints about VC behavior in general will accumulate to YC, since they’re often the public face of startups and startup culture. That might not be fair or ever correct, but it’s how people work. Personally, YC’s involvement in AirBnB is my biggest complaint with the company. I’m not sure how it looked from the inside before hand, but in retrospect AirBnB is one of the poster children of VC backed companies extracting profits at the cost of society, and I suspect that they probably should’ve known better.
        alentist 6y ago
        > AirBnB is one of the poster children of VC backed companies extracting profits at the cost of society Do you have any evidence to back up that claim? Because hard data shows exactly the opposite: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2018/beyond-bls/how-airbnb-has-affected-the-hotel-industry.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2018/beyond-bls/how-airbnb-has-...
  - code_duck 6y ago
    I think it lands in a place between 'charity project' and 'neglible expense of time and effort'.
- samatman 6y ago
  Given ycombinator's market cap, it might be the most cost-effective loss leader in history.
- lowdose 6y ago
  I think YC doesn't publish the numbers to prevent a bandwagon effect from happening. Or do you know more about the numbers?
- julianeon 6y ago
  > The site is extremely simple and something that could be replicated in a couple of days at most by most engineers. I'm a little skeptical of this. Don't get me wrong, I understand that it's not going to win any ACM awards for innovation in web development - it's a simple web app. I know this. But I think it's well beyond the 2-day prototype mark. Because I know what a cheapo off-the-shelf, 2-day-product or PHP forum feels like, and Hacker News doesn't feel like that. It's a little more fine-grained and thoughtful than that. The design, and probably countless little feature improvements that take time to make: I think these have accreted over time, a tiny bit at a time. And for what it's worth, getting comments to nest (stored in DB, parent, child, child of child etc.) and then to show that correctly in the UI isn't quite as easy as people who haven't attempted it might think. And then things like downvoted comments being faded, next page loading at screen bottom, setting up the API... it all adds up.
  - ramraj07 6y ago
    Sure, but a mvp that does 75% of it is definitely possible in a weekend for a pair of really good in-the-zone coders. I'd argue that if you actually list out all these minor features fully, it's even possible to flesh it out completely in 4-5 very long days. Even otherwise, this could easily be a site that starts with a full weekend of work for mvp, followed by gradual refininig over the next few months with feedback needing no more than a Saturday afternoon. I wouldn't even consider myself the best coder out there and I have definitely coded something in a similar timeline in the past - a Netflix style book lending website with queues, inventories, user auth, the whole shebang. Im sure it wouldn't work in the same scale as HN, but I doubt it would have been that hard to keep up. As I typed this I realized how unsubstantiated this claim looks, and to be frank the cost of just doing this isn't even that high, so I'm probably just going to do this next weekend for giggles. Let's see!
    - stormdennis 6y ago
      I hope you did better than Netflix. It's horrible to navigate. For example it's really really not obvious how you find previous seasons of a show.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  > or really require a lot of content moderation I'm not sure about that. HN is moderated very effectively. I couldn't comment on the workload there, not being a moderator.
clairity 6y ago
if you really don't know, you may want to delve more deeply into the value of HN for said venture capitalists--it's not to make a few bucks on the side. think about the community and who they need in the companies they fund.
mschuster91 6y ago
HN is run as a side gig, modded by iirc 2 or 3 staffers. Simple tech stack with next to zero new features, so not too capital intensive. Plus: there are a shitload of people from all over the world here, ranging from broke devs in "third world countries" over German journalists to US VC CEOs. HN is essentially a gateway to a lot of influential people... a "soft power" in politics terms. And one with real monetary value as HN is an excellent place for new YC companies to get users, staff, or a network. An advantage that other VC funds do not have.
- Stratoscope 6y ago
  > HN is run as a side gig, modded by iirc 2 or 3 staffers. I think it may be just one now - sctb's last comment here was 8 months ago.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21930336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21930336
elliekelly 6y ago
HN is maybe the only social network that is actually for socializing and networking. It’s also the only one that has figured out a way to monetize a network of people that doesn’t involve counting eyeballs and clicks. Networks are so valuable and important to success it’s actually kind of crazy that surveillance and advertising is the only strategy most social networks have been able to come up with so far.
- abyssin 6y ago
  I've never socialized neither networked here, but I've learned a ton thanks to the quality of the discussion. It taught me a lot about the importance of moderation, and rules in general.
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    The network HN grows isn’t yours, it’s YC’s. It grows their network of applicants and helps their network of funded companies reach new audiences of users and high quality technical employees via things like Launch HN and the featured hiring posts. And I’d call a comment a form of socializing. Who knows? A maybe one of your comments here put the seed in someone’s head to launch a new startup. That seems like the kind of socializing YC would be interested in fostering to me.
imgabe 6y ago
HN is subsidized by Y Combinator. The costs of running HN are probably a drop in the bucket of the money sloshing around YC.
rodgerd 6y ago
It's a loss-leader for the owners.
djsumdog 6y ago
> I don't know how Hacker News manages to stay so pure It's heavily moderated, more so than Reddit. Right now is an interesting time because COVID posts are weighted to quickly fall off the front page (I'm not really complaining, this is a tech link site and I can see how those get annoying; no one wants to think about that right now, but if you see one of those threads, they are some of the most interesting and controversial, so check them out before they fall off).
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  > COVID posts are weighted to quickly fall off the front page (I'm not really complaining, this is a tech link site and I can see how those get annoying Agreed. There is no shortage of COVID coverage, like, everywhere so I'm glad that they slide away quickly. That said, I do appreciate the hard looks the HN crowd takes on some of the posted studies.
LoSboccacc 6y ago
> Hacker News manages to stay so pure we're still the product https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs it's mutually beneficial, compared to say straight up advertising, but still.
dan-robertson 6y ago
1. Moderation, by thoughtful paid moderators. In particular I think the style of moderation is pretty good here 2. Light curation (pushing posts that aren’t a “good fit” down the rankings; asking people to resubmit good submissions that flopped) 3. I feel like it’s changed quite a lot in the last 10 years or so I’ve been reading the site. The popular topics have changed. I see fewer of some kinds of stupid comment and more of other kinds of stupid comment. But it’s hard to describe what the changes are.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

MattGaiser 6y ago

Hacker News is smaller than most major subreddits in terms of usage. 400 upvotes is considered a lot here. The site is extremely simple and something that could be replicated in a couple of days at most by most engineers. It doesn't process money or really require a lot of content moderation either.

freddie_mercury 6y ago
That is all true but the real answer is that it is run as a charity project by billionaires. So it doesn't need to be monetized.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  They probably source enough engineers on here to make it more bait rather than charity.
  - bigiain 6y ago
    There are very few billionaire charity projects that don't have some kind of bait stench associated with them... This site is a lot less brazen that, say the Gates Foundation or Jack Dorseys "all the strings attached" charity "donations", but there's no doubt it's run in the interests of YC and they're doing it for the benefits they get. Not that I begrudge them that. It just needs to be something you bear in mind when wondering about odd looking article rankings or apparent voting/submission patterns that evade the fraud detection... It's their space, they can do that if they want. I (and everyone else) needs to weight up the benefit to themselves against the benefit to the people in control, and determine whether to hang around here, or walk away. For me? They do an OK job of not taking too m much advantage of their ultimate power here. I'm mostly cool with them.
- bcassedy 6y ago
  Ehh there's a really pro ycombinator slant and ever notice how any yc announcement, hiring notice, or article quickly hits the top? They're getting a lot of value out of that stuff that helps with the VC side of things.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    Who would hate on YCombinator?
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      There are some legitimate arguments about how VC backed startups have behaved as of late, and YC is part of that overall system. I’m not sure where I personally sit, but I think it’s a bit silly to pretend that YC is universally beloved or beyond reproach.
      - MattGaiser 6y ago
        I did not think it was universally beloved, but just never read any negative viewpoint about them so was curious.
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        Keep in mind that YC is very visible. As a result, complaints about VC behavior in general will accumulate to YC, since they’re often the public face of startups and startup culture. That might not be fair or ever correct, but it’s how people work. Personally, YC’s involvement in AirBnB is my biggest complaint with the company. I’m not sure how it looked from the inside before hand, but in retrospect AirBnB is one of the poster children of VC backed companies extracting profits at the cost of society, and I suspect that they probably should’ve known better.
        alentist 6y ago
        > AirBnB is one of the poster children of VC backed companies extracting profits at the cost of society Do you have any evidence to back up that claim? Because hard data shows exactly the opposite: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2018/beyond-bls/how-airbnb-has-affected-the-hotel-industry.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2018/beyond-bls/how-airbnb-has-...
- code_duck 6y ago
  I think it lands in a place between 'charity project' and 'neglible expense of time and effort'.
samatman 6y ago
Given ycombinator's market cap, it might be the most cost-effective loss leader in history.
lowdose 6y ago
I think YC doesn't publish the numbers to prevent a bandwagon effect from happening. Or do you know more about the numbers?
julianeon 6y ago
> The site is extremely simple and something that could be replicated in a couple of days at most by most engineers. I'm a little skeptical of this. Don't get me wrong, I understand that it's not going to win any ACM awards for innovation in web development - it's a simple web app. I know this. But I think it's well beyond the 2-day prototype mark. Because I know what a cheapo off-the-shelf, 2-day-product or PHP forum feels like, and Hacker News doesn't feel like that. It's a little more fine-grained and thoughtful than that. The design, and probably countless little feature improvements that take time to make: I think these have accreted over time, a tiny bit at a time. And for what it's worth, getting comments to nest (stored in DB, parent, child, child of child etc.) and then to show that correctly in the UI isn't quite as easy as people who haven't attempted it might think. And then things like downvoted comments being faded, next page loading at screen bottom, setting up the API... it all adds up.
- ramraj07 6y ago
  Sure, but a mvp that does 75% of it is definitely possible in a weekend for a pair of really good in-the-zone coders. I'd argue that if you actually list out all these minor features fully, it's even possible to flesh it out completely in 4-5 very long days. Even otherwise, this could easily be a site that starts with a full weekend of work for mvp, followed by gradual refininig over the next few months with feedback needing no more than a Saturday afternoon. I wouldn't even consider myself the best coder out there and I have definitely coded something in a similar timeline in the past - a Netflix style book lending website with queues, inventories, user auth, the whole shebang. Im sure it wouldn't work in the same scale as HN, but I doubt it would have been that hard to keep up. As I typed this I realized how unsubstantiated this claim looks, and to be frank the cost of just doing this isn't even that high, so I'm probably just going to do this next weekend for giggles. Let's see!
  - stormdennis 6y ago
    I hope you did better than Netflix. It's horrible to navigate. For example it's really really not obvious how you find previous seasons of a show.
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> or really require a lot of content moderation I'm not sure about that. HN is moderated very effectively. I couldn't comment on the workload there, not being a moderator.

clairity 6y ago

if you really don't know, you may want to delve more deeply into the value of HN for said venture capitalists--it's not to make a few bucks on the side. think about the community and who they need in the companies they fund.

mschuster91 6y ago

HN is run as a side gig, modded by iirc 2 or 3 staffers. Simple tech stack with next to zero new features, so not too capital intensive. Plus: there are a shitload of people from all over the world here, ranging from broke devs in "third world countries" over German journalists to US VC CEOs. HN is essentially a gateway to a lot of influential people... a "soft power" in politics terms. And one with real monetary value as HN is an excellent place for new YC companies to get users, staff, or a network. An advantage that other VC funds do not have.

Stratoscope 6y ago
> HN is run as a side gig, modded by iirc 2 or 3 staffers. I think it may be just one now - sctb's last comment here was 8 months ago.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21930336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21930336

elliekelly 6y ago

HN is maybe the only social network that is actually for socializing and networking. It’s also the only one that has figured out a way to monetize a network of people that doesn’t involve counting eyeballs and clicks. Networks are so valuable and important to success it’s actually kind of crazy that surveillance and advertising is the only strategy most social networks have been able to come up with so far.

abyssin 6y ago
I've never socialized neither networked here, but I've learned a ton thanks to the quality of the discussion. It taught me a lot about the importance of moderation, and rules in general.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  The network HN grows isn’t yours, it’s YC’s. It grows their network of applicants and helps their network of funded companies reach new audiences of users and high quality technical employees via things like Launch HN and the featured hiring posts. And I’d call a comment a form of socializing. Who knows? A maybe one of your comments here put the seed in someone’s head to launch a new startup. That seems like the kind of socializing YC would be interested in fostering to me.

imgabe 6y ago

HN is subsidized by Y Combinator. The costs of running HN are probably a drop in the bucket of the money sloshing around YC.

rodgerd 6y ago

It's a loss-leader for the owners.

djsumdog 6y ago

> I don't know how Hacker News manages to stay so pure It's heavily moderated, more so than Reddit. Right now is an interesting time because COVID posts are weighted to quickly fall off the front page (I'm not really complaining, this is a tech link site and I can see how those get annoying; no one wants to think about that right now, but if you see one of those threads, they are some of the most interesting and controversial, so check them out before they fall off).

blaser-waffle 6y ago
> COVID posts are weighted to quickly fall off the front page (I'm not really complaining, this is a tech link site and I can see how those get annoying Agreed. There is no shortage of COVID coverage, like, everywhere so I'm glad that they slide away quickly. That said, I do appreciate the hard looks the HN crowd takes on some of the posted studies.

LoSboccacc 6y ago

> Hacker News manages to stay so pure we're still the product https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs it's mutually beneficial, compared to say straight up advertising, but still.

dan-robertson 6y ago

1. Moderation, by thoughtful paid moderators. In particular I think the style of moderation is pretty good here 2. Light curation (pushing posts that aren’t a “good fit” down the rankings; asking people to resubmit good submissions that flopped) 3. I feel like it’s changed quite a lot in the last 10 years or so I’ve been reading the site. The popular topics have changed. I see fewer of some kinds of stupid comment and more of other kinds of stupid comment. But it’s hard to describe what the changes are.