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PG: The biggest source of stress for me at YC was running HN
- im3w1l 6y agoPeople were always like this. You just weren't able to see it, because you were in an offline "filter bubble" of peaceful and reasonable people. There have been countless civil wars in history after all.
- ianai 6y agoNo, what online media are doing is massive propaganda at scales and levels of insidiousness unlike ever imaginable before now. Cambridge analytica for instance targeted ads at people to maximize their outrage toward other citizens. Before advertisements were much easier to avoid or ignore and weren’t being used for outrage. Ads have to get clicks nowadays for revenue and in the past they just had to be associated with wide viewership. People click on what infuriates them more often than other content.
- sneak 6y agoLong before the internet there were people generating enough outrage in a society to slaughter millions of people on flimsy or no basis. I don’t think this is anything new. If anything, it offers a counterbalance: you can also communicate with groups of reasonable people not physically proximate to you.
- neonate 6y agoNot in the postwar West, and that's the area where the change we're talking about is notable, so your point is actually an argument for the opposite conclusion.
- mindslight 6y agoIraq? Vietnam? Surely those count as slaughtering massive numbers of people on flimsy bases. But yes that trend seems to be slowing down, which I'd attribute to the splintering of mass media. Are we actually becoming more divided, or are we just becoming more aware of divisions because we're all more connected?
- neonate 6y agoFor sure those count. I mean domestically. Obviously we do things abroad that we would never tolerate at home, and that's one of the biggest problems with our society. Nonetheless the domestic situation has been stable for a long time, and if the foundation cracks there, it will be notable.
- mindslight 6y agoI read sneak's comment as being about wars, which are mostly foreign. What domestic events were you thinking of that fit that description?
- intended 6y agoUh, the postwar west developed the modern techniques. For a while the rationalist approach was dominant and media channels tended to reflect that ideology. But with the creation of the 24/7 news cycle a whole new system to leverage the modern media tools that were created. Eventually in the 1990s this trend came to a head with the creation of Fox news and the rest is frankly history. But before that, for a short while, it did look like reason was overcoming superstition and ignorance.
- hindsightbias 6y agoJust because the medium is more diverse doesn’t mean it’s much different. In 2009, the NYT started a series called “Disunion”, a day-by-day look back to the Civil War 150 years prior. Filled with sampled newspapers, opinion pieces, letters to the editor. After a couple of months, it was quite clear how a country tore itself apart. They didnt need ads or FB, all they needed were the paper owners and the editors. They actually paused the series because (imo) the things said about Lincoln in 1859 and Obama in 2009 were quite similar.
- ianai 6y agoSo they found a great way to highlight what was going on in current events and canceled it? Now we’re left in the lurch.
- ufmace 6y agoPerhaps to some extent. There is always a baseline level of division and conflict. But I do believe there are things that can be done to amplify or suppress division in a society. I think we're leaning real hard on the amplification of division right now. None of this stuff has been around long enough to get an overall feeling on the effect it has on a society that has it versus a similar level society that does not, so it's hard to say for sure what the effect will be. I have a bad feeling about it though.
- scarface74 6y agoYes because before the internet there was never division - like actual separate water fountains, door that you had to go in based on the color of your skin, schools, redlining, and racial covenants.
- dx87 6y agoI think the difference is that even if there were unreasonable people, they usually weren't the majority because their reach was severely restricted outside their local area. Now the unreasonable people aren't limited to their geographic area, and can form mobs with members around the world in order to harass people.
- ywhjaknskkkw 6y agoOr make people wear masks for a mild flu.
- ve55 6y agoOne large difference is the Internet forces us to live with each other. Without the Internet it's easier to have two differing communities with different values and laws and so on, and they can both live and let live. But now we have put all of the communities onto the same websites, and this is much more difficult.
- manigandham 6y agoPeople aren't the medium, and that's what we're talking about. Social media is a different kind of communication mechanism that has evolved extremely rapidly and has overrun all of the typical social systems we had in place. We just aren't designed to handle this and it's bringing out the worst in us.
- dang 6y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23806806 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23806806. (Trying to prune the larger sub-subthreads.)
- cheeze 6y agoOn the flipside - Let's not act like ycombinator doesn't benefit from hn. YCombinator gets free advertising to a TON of good engineers for their companies roles (the posts that you can't comment on that mention X random ycombinator company is looking for Y role). Surely that has to be worth something... I don't disagree with pg's statement here, but IMO yc gets pretty big benefit from running the forum.
- musicale 6y agoPresumably one or two good hires would more than compensate for years of running HN, but forum moderation is still a difficult and stressful job.
- renewiltord 6y agoInteresting. How do you account that? Two good hires can probably repeatably be obtained for under $100k in spending or giving away $100k of your company. Since Daniel G (dang) works on HN full time, and almost certainly makes more than $100k, that doesn't make sense to me.
- swyx 6y agois dang paid to do this? how does it work?
- dang 6y agoYes.
- blast 6y agoWhat does that have to do with how stressful he found it relative to other things at YC?
- pmiller2 6y agoWell, that sure is the most "first world problem," tone deaf thing I've heard all day.
- happytoexplain 6y agoI know "multiple layers of irony" is a joke, but this comment might actually qualify.
- greesil 6y ago"third world" countries don't have forums on the internet?
- cambalache 6y agoWe do, we just dont lose any sleep about them, you americans take social media way too seriously
- surfpel 6y agoThe effects it’s had are far reaching. The Arab spring, right wing extremism, anti vaxxers, the rise of Bernie Sanders just off the top of my head. Seems quite serious to me
- mw6621 6y agoI agree with his ultimate conclusion -- don't start a forum. It is no fun being an internet referee.
- enitihas 6y agoIt is fun if you are seeking status or power, and thus it ends up attracting similarly inclined people.
- dvtrn 6y agoIt was amusing to me watching this comment turn grey when first stumbling upon it, I wonder if some apparently think entithas is just lying about it or if they’ve truly never come across a moderator or group of moderators who were just a power-tripping JERKS in their internet lives, and so thoroughly disbelieve there are people out there who just want power over a measly phpbb message board or subreddit that they just downvoted this and ran away. I envy everyone who has yet to come across it, yours is truly a blessed internet experience. Those kinds of rulers just sap the joy out of communities and lead to splinter after splinter.
- wtracy 6y agoI imagine it was downvoted because it came across as a jab at the HN moderators. Looking at the bigger picture, yeah, I have to agree. I have seen a virtual coup d'etat on a subreddit dedicated to fast food. (One moderator got kicked out. He responded by creating his own subreddit. He actually got 90% of the posters to come with him, leaving behind an empty husk of a subreddit.)
- dvtrn 6y agoI imagine it was downvoted because it came across as a jab at the HN moderators. Interesting. The comment seemed quite broad and generalized for one to come to that specific assumption, just because HN happens to be the where the discussion is being held, but appreciate the insight. Maybe I’m projecting a bit, since it’s not a conclusion I would have arrived at, but that’s for me to own and work on.
- maxdata 6y agoEven after all these years I have no idea what Y combinator is or does, nor do I care to learn. I just come here for news stories.
- maxheadrum 6y agoI have no idea what the pictures in playboy are about. Nor do I care to learn. I just read the articles.
- bpodgursky 6y agoNot that there's anything wrong with just reading the stories, but I'm a bit incredulous that you haven't passively picked up the thesis, from the stories about the investment changes, demo days, and all the uh... YC startups that get discussed and front-paged.
- pmoriarty 6y agoThere were some years when there were a slew of "Here's what I learned from applying to YC" stories, but those have mostly faded, and so have most startup-focused stories. Now HN is a mix of tech news and politics, and I'm not surprised that some HN readers who are not interested in startups have no clue what YC is about.
- freehunter 6y agoThis has been a big concern of mine lately. I spend more time here than I used to, but I increasingly get less and less value out of the time I spend here. I used to come here to learn about bleeding-edge technology and startups and cool ideas and things that geniuses were working on. Now when I come here I almost always end up arguing politics, not because I want to but because those are the stories that people actively comment on and I have poor self control. The few tech stories that do make it through are far more pop-tech article (right now NPR, BBC, New York Times, MSN, and Haaretz are all on the front page... absolutely nothing to do with hackers or gratifying intellectual curiosity) or talking about startups that are shutting down. I'm tired of collapsing the inevitable "Macbooks are bad" thread and finding out that was literally the only conversation under the article. I think the mods do a great job of keeping the conversation civil, but a poor job of enforcing "intellectual curiosity" like the guidelines call for.
- ufmace 6y agoI think there's a larger point in what he said. Basically all current social media ends up optimizing for creating outrage, spawning mobs, less thoughtful discussion and more vitriolic arguments, etc. It's becoming a real concern to me that this is going to drive us into some kind of civil war or something if we don't find some way to check it. The outrage seems to be like a drug. Nothing generates engagement quite like it, even if it's toxic in the long-term. So all social media platforms that embrace it grow bigger until they become near-monopolies, and all that don't so far have had a hard time growing userbases, making money, and generally fade into irrelevance. It would be a real service to society IMO if we could find a way to somehow generate enough engagement and energy to challenge the big players without the outrage culture.
- pmoriarty 6y agoThis outrage is neither happening in a vacuum, nor is it simply a reflexive reaction to outrage on the opposite side. Real actions in the physical world are at the root of this outrage. The internet, in all of its forms, simply increases awareness of what's going on around the world. In the past, there was a relatively miniscule amount of information you could get about what was happening, and you could only get it through some gatekeepers. Now you can see what's happening, often as it happens, in cell phone camera footage and in direct reporting from people who are there, and the opinions of your fellow men are not filtered and reduced to a trickle by gatekeepers. A pessimistic view is that, like the babel fish, such increased communication will only lead to increased conflict, yet there is evidence that increased understanding and compassion can come from it too.
- zug_zug 6y agoSo thinking about that... One the one hand, suppose I log into reddit and see police officers clubbing some people drinking beers (this specific instance was in a foreign country). Yes, on the one hand, I'm just more aware of a bad thing in the world. But on the other, if a million people get outraged watching a clip like that, it seems it does create a "magnification" effect where potentially the outrage is entirely disproportionate compared to crime that isn't brutal and on video (e.g. rich avoiding taxes) but may actually be much more important.
- peapicker 6y agoLoved the comment On the tweet from Rob ‘CmdrTaco’ Malda
- romanows 6y ago"I coulda told you THAT man. It’s a nightmare!"-- Rob ‘CmdrTaco’ Malda
- kubanczyk 6y agoMods, thank you all for saving the day every day. Thank you a hundred times. (On behalf of these 99% of lurkers that benefit your work the most but never say anything.) (Flag this.)
- Sebb767 6y agoYes! Dang is doing such a great job. We tend to have really awesome discussions here and for the first few months on this site, I didn't even realize it was moderated. Hats off to him.
- sinak 6y agoI want to chime in and agree with this. Thank you dang and sctb. You guys are amazing. (Is sctb still a moderator? Looks like his last post was 8 or so months ago.)
- dang 6y agoAlas, Scott left. Normally we'd both have posted more prominently about that, but it happened at an especially difficult time and that simply wasn't possible. (He's fine, I'm fine, and we're fine, in case that suggested otherwise.)
- jamest 6y agoThank you for everything you do, Dan. Many of us spend our precious time here because of you. It is deeply appreciated.
- edanm 6y agoSad that Scott left, but happy to hear the circumstances are ok now. Nevertheless, thanks to you dang for the amazing work you do, and to Scott for the work he did do. Is there now (or will there) be a new person on the team?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sneak 6y agoWhat part about running HN stressed him out?
- alexandercrohde 6y agoYeah, I'm curious if he burdens himself with our inane internet opinions (reads it)? Or if people manage to send him emails about it?
- FilterSweep 6y agotoo many dissenting opinions toward his "Separate, but Equal" beliefs.
- MattGaiser 6y agoI’m a Facebook group moderator. The stressful part is figuring out how to be fair with everyone screaming at you that you are biased.
- davidgerard 6y agoI understand that HN postings and comments used to form part of the assessment process for prospective YC candidates. Is that still the case?
- dang 6y agoNot really. Actually, it didn't ever really. pg would sometimes recognize a username and that was about it.
- davidgerard 6y agoLooks like Sam Altman says otherwise: https://ytpak.net/watch?v=kVKaMHgOTP4 https://ytpak.net/watch?v=kVKaMHgOTP4 "The way we recruit the best people in the world is by reaching them via multiple channels. So the alumni work is really important, hacker news is really important, putting great content online is really important" pretty sure this isn't what I was thinking of, so still looking
- mtgp1000 6y agoAs someone who occasionally has run-ins with mods, I have to remark that moderation as of late has been quite welcoming to "dissenting" opinion, exceptionally so given current events. Thank you, dang, you have shepherded a glimmering institution among a sea of rough.
- _bxg1 6y agoI honestly think the only solution is for individuals to recuse themselves from those networks (I say on one of those networks), lower the trust they place in digital information, etc. It's become clear that the downward spiral is intrinsic to the medium itself (or possibly just the scale). I don't believe that any amount of technology, or product-rethinking, or UX will change that. We just weren't meant to interact this way. My only hope is that people eventually get disenchanted or burned-out enough that they simply stop engaging. I replied to the original tweet too ("what would you do if you were Jack Dorsey?"). I said I'd shut the whole thing down.
- asah 6y agoSadly, the level headed people recuse themselves which only adds to the toxicity.
- newacct583 6y agoActually what happens is the level headed people on one side of an issue divide recuse themselves, leaving a "seemingly level-headed consensus echo chamber" behind. IMHO, that's worse. This account exists largely to counter exactly that trend. It's important (to me) that newcomers to the site don't get the idea that "hackers" are all fringe libertarians on every non-technical subject.
- dang 6y agoThis site may feel like a "consensus echo chamber" but in reality it is nothing remotely close to that. I think you may be running into the notice-dislike bias: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Since you report noticing fringe libertarians, we can be sure that you dislike fringe libertarianism. We can also be sure that they have just the opposite picture of HN, since everyone crafts their picture in the image of what they dislike, without realizing that they're doing that. It just feels like an objective picture. I can list dozens of examples of this, but I'll restrain myself for once and spare you. Unfortunately, these extremely contradictory subjective images of HN seem to be a consequence of its structure, being non-siloed: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20non-siloed&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... This creates a paradox where precisely because the site is less divisive it feels more divisive—in the sense that it feels to people like it is dominated by their enemies, whoever their enemies may be. That's extremely bad for community, and I don't know what to do about it, other than post a version of this comment every time it comes up. Thanks for caring about level-headeness, in any case.
- thaumaturgy 6y ago> Don't start a forum. HN certainly has its faults, but it has also helped numerous people improve their skills, find better jobs, share insights, start startups, build companies. There should be no doubt that HN is a net positive, and if you can't see that, then you are part of the problem with social media: you're so focused on the negative aspects of a subject that you've lost perspective. We need more and better forums, not fewer.
- renewiltord 6y agoPG's advice is to each person. You can rest assured that I have no desire whatsoever to do many things that are net positives to the world and are, nonetheless, deleterious to my life.
- holler 6y ago> Don't start a forum ...working on new forum ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I agree with your sentiment, we need more/new options.
- shaklee3 6y agoYou'd be surprised reading Twitter. There's a large group of people that seem to hate this site (usually calling it the orange site), and I'm not sure why. Every site will have people you disagree with, but unlike sites like reddit, people seem to be genuine more often. Also ironic Twitter is being used as a platform to say HN is bad.
- nabaraz 6y agoAre we at a point where dividing HN into smaller communities is beneficial? I know there are Show HN, Ask HN, Who is Hiring, etc? I want to see a section for DIY/personal projects and maybe even AMAs.
- ciarannolan 6y agoI hope not. I like HN just the way it is. It's a simple text message board with good moderation. We don't need to pile on more features for the sake of it. There are plenty of communities for DIY projects and AMAs.
- gus_massa 6y agoI really like the plain structure, but I also noted that sometimes it is difficult for the small projects to reach the front page. Please remember to go to https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest and upvote interesting small projects.
- dang 6y agoAnd https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew, which is much less well known. It's linked from https://news.ycombinator.com/show https://news.ycombinator.com/show at the top.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
- dsr_ 6y agoThe key to getting good discussions is to not have a profit motive coupled to eyeballs. HN doesn't show ads, doesn't care about growth. Large newspapers had strict firewalls between advertising, journalism and opinion -- but smaller papers had to fold to pressure from advertisers. Subscription services need eyeballs badly -- but they need paying eyeballs, which means that they need to offer more than just outrage -- but if they don't show at least some of their content for free, they can't grow.
- saagarjha 6y ago> HN doesn't show ads, doesn't care about growth. Nit: Hacker News shows job ads, and is interested in attracting new users. Just not like your typical VC-funded social media website.
- mraza007 6y agoI think that’s beauty of hackernews
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoThat is plainly insufficient. There's serious outrage, polarization, and lack of nuance on this site about a variety of topics. Privacy, anything google, amazon, or Uber, gender and racial politics, Facebook, etc. There's more going on here than the profit motive. The problem isn't that these companies want to make a profit. The problem is they make it easy for people to get what they want, and users seek out outrage and polarization. I think that combined with the globalizing tendency of ubiquitous, high bandwidth, low latency, broadcast-capable connections is a real problem. But since I believe it's a human nature thing, I'm much less sure of how to solve it, especially while respecting the free speech value.
- xtracto 6y agoUsing the fact that CmdrTaco commented in that twitter thread, i want to bring into comment slashdot moderation system. I always thought it was better than simple upvote/downvote because the "tags" (insightful, interesting, flamebait,troll) enticed you to think twice about the modding, preventing knee-jerk nodding reaction. The fact that often the most voted comments on hacker news are the most extreme (saying something is completely wrong) shows that we love correcting people and will discount a good conversation in place of some virtual approval.
- every 6y agoMetafilter[0], via moderators, has done a nice job for several decades. But definitely less technical and more social than HN... [0]: https://www.metafilter.com/ https://www.metafilter.com/
- riyadparvez 6y agoI can certainly see his point. The more I grow older, the more I am convinced to spend less time on internet interacting with people. Not only the anonymity or pseudo-anonymity is a magnet for toxic people, it also brings out the worst in people. Even disregarding the outright abuse or outrage, the opinions I see on the internet is very hard to meet someone in real life who has that kind of opinions. Every Google related thread immediately becomes a thread of bashing Google's history of killing products. I don't know how many times people need to have the same conversation again and again. This has gotten to the point that I don't open any Google related threads. I am here to read thoughtful discussions, not some broken records again and again. Internet forum is hard.
- Kiro 6y agoHN is full of bandwagons where every thread about certain subjects is identical to the last. Some topics are impossible to discuss here (e.g. anything related to Google).
- Sebb767 6y ago> Not only the anonymity or pseudo-anonymity is a magnet for toxic people, it also brings out the worst in people. For one, yes, but Facebook has clear names (usually) and still it degraded quite a bit and hosts obscure trends such as flat eathers. So I don't think anonymity is really all too important. Maybe it's rather that you can now find like-minded people to strengthen your opinion, even when there are actually really few overall.
- grumple 6y agoI don't think it has anything to do with anonymity. Most people are using their real names on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. But quips and outrage get more attention and engagement than serious discussion (and none of these platforms are conducive to long-form discussion). The biggest problem is that replying to a post makes it appear in more feeds. Never in the history of debate and discussion has "add more people!" led to more effective communication. Think of your own work experience - how many meetings were useful when they grew and grew every week? HN benefits from the lack of a feed but also suffers from the inability to continue discussions over long periods of time between a few users. Something like slack's threads would be useful for a forum, as well as more permanent (old school) topic-based subforums and threads.
- FilterSweep 6y agoAre we sure the civil war isn’t being caused by sychophants like PG himself cozying up to the alt-right while maintaining considerable power over online discourse? Maybe these are the """hard questions"""[0] that need to be asked, as opposed to calling for a return to the Jim Crow era. You could easily "turn off" Twitter. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
- kgraves 6y ago> ...PG himself cozying up to the alt-right? Do you have evidence for this statement?
- FilterSweep 6y agoHere: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html And here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18426853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18426853 And here: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474708/does-this-mega-vc-sound-racist-.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474708/does-this-mega... Perhaps if the queen of Hacker News chose to be clear about his beliefs his minions wouldn’t need to scurry to claim "he doesn’t actually believe this"
- aliante 6y agoThis makes as much sense as claiming that I am cozy to Hitler for favoring government healthcare.
- FilterSweep 6y agoironically, that makes a ton of sense. it’s also why I would no longer recommend minorities to seek funding from YC.
- 0x00000000 6y agoSometimes you just need to take a step back and realize how inane and unhinged you sound.
- arjie 6y agoIn my opinion, losing most HN comments and using just the links would be a great way to browse HN. Here's some trivial code to accomplish that https://github.com/roshan/hnncnn/blob/master/hnncnn.js https://github.com/roshan/hnncnn/blob/master/hnncnn.js
- coronadisaster 6y ago"... losing most HN comments would be a great way to browse HN" Thanks for this comment /s
- dehrmann 6y agoThere are really only two types of HN users: ones who just read the articles and ones who just engage with the headline in the comments.
- EdJiang 6y agoHaving run communities and forums in the past, it's definitely a lot of thankless and time-sensitive work. I'm reminded of this post: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-gardens-die-by-pacifism https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-... I think HN's done a reasonable job at keeping the community stable (thanks @dang) but the recent backlash over the press incited by SSC and Clubhouse has made see that the darker side of mob mentality exists on HN, too.
- bzb3 6y agoWe love you dang.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoDoes dang sleep?
- credit_guy 6y agoSo here's a startup idea: create an HN-like forum for topics that are usually avoided on HN. Such as politics. And the only way to have a civil politics forum is to have some professional moderator like dang who can step in and explain the rules to anyone who gets carried away a bit too much. Little by little, the users get educated and start enforcing the rules themselves, either via downvotes, or via actual comments. Wouldn't that be great? In an age of complete political polarization, to have a sanctuary place on the internet where you can go and exchange thoughtful ideas with considerate peers who may or may not share your political alignment, but treat you with respect.
- iliketosleep 6y agoIt's a beautiful dream, but I don't think it would work. Quotes from what is civil discourse about heated political topics would get taken out of context, posted on twitter, labeled as hate speech, picked up by the media, and probably end up getting the startup more or less canceled.
- SheinhardtWigCo 6y agoHave you seen this subreddit? https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/ Forums are very hard to start. You need a catalyst. HN’s was YC - that’s the bar.
- balladeer 6y agoThank you, this looks nice. Do you know something similar for /r/worldnews? Something that's more like what you shared and /r/askhistorians.
- SheinhardtWigCo 6y agor/TrueReddit might be close to what you’re looking for.
- atombender 6y agoThe problem with such an idea is that there's a lot of room for abuse below what can be expressed in the form of rules, which means it can be difficult to moderate without appearing to censor or favor particular sides. People can be abusive in subtle ways that enter a gray area of civility. For example, a discussion thread that devolves into a combative exchange about what a participant really meant by their comments, and whether that means they're a white supremacist, will eventually become exhausting and pointless, and everyone knows it, but what kind of rule can ban "exhausting and pointless" threads? But any moderation that can't be enforced on technical terms will start making the enforcers seem subjective and biased. Reddit has a long record of subs abandoned in anger by a large cohort of users because they consider the mods to be unfairly biased, and it's not always the case. Conversely, forums can die if the "good" users think that not enough is being done to shut up problematic users. I help run a private discussion board that's been active for ten years now. It's great, but it's had its own share of drama. The hardest problem we had was a person who simply incited trouble. He didn't break any rules. He was just a very difficult person, and we knew (through friends of his) that he had mental issues. In the interest of being fair and keeping to our terms of use, we let him stay. While there were people who openly argued that the community should have room for people like him, others complained and started leaving the site, just because of all the heated drama. This went on for years. After several incidents where it just became too much, we decided to ban him permanently. But it was a hard decision. We still have "problem users" who, purely by voicing unpopular opinions (from nationalist/fascist sympathies to belief in anti-vaxx or rejection of Western medicine), incite a lot of heated discussions. They're not breaking any rules, they're just loud and controversial. I think a discussion board lives and dies by the trust its users put in the moderators.
- mraza007 6y agoI love hacker news and attained a lot of knowledge from this. I’m just curious how much traffic does HN gets
- coronadisaster 6y agoI think that was caused by the rules of HN... maybe because there are too many of them (he might have created them too).
- papandada 6y agoGive it up for dang, props from Calgary
- 6510 6y agoThanks Paul, its been great.
- DevKoala 6y agoTIL: That PG agrees that the source for Twitter’s toxicity is the pursue of engagement at all costs. Those recommendation algorithms that surface content that triggers people’s emotions and spur divisiveness are clearly one of the main reasons why citizens in the USA are at war among themselves.
- nojvek 6y agoTHIS ^ It’s hard for us to believe our fancy AI algorithms that optimize for ad clicks have this massive side effects of actually manipulating what is perceived as reality and affecting their emotions. They surface more enraging news and create echo chambers where anyone who doesn’t think like them are the enemy.
- ksec 6y agoI do wonder what sort of traffic HN gets in terms of Page view. Would HN consider self hosting an analytic like plausible or other cloud solution where the information is public?
- dang 6y agoThese days around 5.5M page views daily and something like 5M unique readers a month, depending on how you try to count them. pg used to post graphs sometimes using an old Google API where you could supply all the data points in a URL and it would return an image. Edit: like http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=ls&chco=ff7700,000000,ff0000,008800,444499&chs=680x300&chd=t:48,46,44,45,45,46,44,44,48,55,61,65,69,75,74,74,73,76,75,75,72,74,73,68,65,62,60,58,56,55,53,53,55,48,48,48,46,46,43,45,38,41,44,42,41,40,42,45,47,50,52,52,53,53,54,55,52,50,52,55,54,54,47,48,50,47,49,55,49,48,49,49,46,47,47,47,46,44,43,43,38,38,43,46,56,59,62,65,64,62,66,68,65,66,63,59,59,55,61,62,60,59,59,62,56,54,53,54,49,47,48,44,47,41,42,45,54,57,62,65,69,73,78,76,76,80,81,80,78,77,76,73,71,69,64,61,60|18,20,23,18,22,25,19,25,25,23,24,22,24,27,30,28,28,31,29,27,29,30,27,27,25,27,26,27,25,27,27,27,23,23,24,23,24,25,25,25,23,24,21,26,24,24,24,24,25,26,26,27,26,26,26,30,28,26,26,26,28,28,33,27,27,24,26,27,28,28,25,27,27,28,28,32,24,26,25,24,26,25,28,25,26,27,25,27,27,32,30,32,31,27,28,26,28,31,27,33,30,30,30,30,25,28,28,29,27,32,29,29,27,28,25,30,29,29,27,31,30,31,30,35,34,34,34,38,33,32,35,31,31,29,30,34,34|19,22,23,24,25,25,26,26,26,27,27,27,27,28,28,28,28,29,29,29,29,30,30,30,31,31,31,31,31,31,31,31,32,32,32,32,32,32,32,32,32,32,32,32,32,33,33,33,33,33,33,33,33,33,33,33,33,33,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37|14,15,14,1,1,2,18,1,1,16,15,1,1,16,1,15,0,15,15,14,13,1,15,0,14,16,17,16,17,0,16,17,15,16,18,16,16,0,23,17,0,2,16,16,16,16,15,16,15,15,16,20,15,15,15,17,16,16,16,15,14,19,0,16,13,23,15,14,1,15,14,1,15,13,14,14,18,13,1,15,0,13,14,14,14,39,20,25,14,1,14,18,1,14,0,14,13,12,13,13,12,12,12,1,20,15,13,13,13,13,16,14,0,14,13,0,13,0,15,2,14,14,1,17,0,13,14,14,24,40,13,13,13,15,14,16,14|4,5,5,4,4,5,9,5,3,10,14,4,6,2,4,5,5,3,3,3,279,2,4,7,24,3,2,6,2,5,4,5,4,2,3,2,3,5,15,2,4,3,5,3,9,17,16,5,2,3,4,4,2,3,141,3,36,3,3,5,9,2,3,2,3,3,7,4,3,5,4,4,7,6,6,5,6,3,11,3,7,3,6,2,5,3,4,4,2,5,3,3,3,4,4,2,3,4,5,42,4,6,7,6,59,3,3,4,3,6,4,3,3,6,25,4,3,4,26,9,26,84,5,5,9,5,3,5,18,3,5,43,8 http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=ls&chco=ff7700,000000..., which still works! via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1833276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1833276
- atum47 6y agoI got internet when I was 10 years old. I was one of the first ones in a small city, Brazil. We had our first computer when I was about 4 or 5. So, when the internet came, I already had 5 years of experience with computers. We all had nicknames and IRC handles to talk anonymous on the internet. Eventually came ICQ and we start having people as contact. I knew almost everyone in my city who was on the internet. It didn't took long to understand that I was not anonymous anymore. Although I had a nickname, I had also real connection with my contacts and I knew who they were. When I was 17 internet was a thing most people have, including people who never had a computer before. This people would say things online that they wouldn't in the real world. I remember an very rude email I got that someone sent my from their workplace. I just use whois to get a phone number from the company, I then call them and explained what happened, 10 minutes after the person who sent the email sent another apologizing. As someone said in the comments: this "rage" you see online is because we still can't punch each other through the screen (or cause it's very rare when a shit thing someone does online have a real backlash). Me, who grew up with a computer and in forums, IRC channels, regular chat rooms... already had some kind of ethics. When my father (that besides being the one who got us the computer) got on Facebook he had a fight with a lot of relatives because of politics or some other nonsense like that. (imagine fighting someone over a shitty politician who will never give a shit about you). I always wonder how would I manage a social network or online community - I would try to have well established rules and try my best to enforce them. But in the end on the day I guess I would ban a lot of people and excluding a lot of groups. anyway, I love HN and I think you are doing a great job, both you and Dang. Keep it up.
- rsecora 6y agoEvery forum risk having an Eternal September. Eternal September is a period beginning in September 1993, the month that America Online (AOL) began offering Usenet access to its many users. Before then, Usenet was largely restricted to colleges, universities, and other research institutions. Every September, many incoming students would acquire access to Usenet for the first time, taking time to become accustomed to Usenet's standards of conduct and "netiquette". After a month or so, these new users would either learn to comply with the networks' social norms or tire of using the service. The influx of new users from AOL did not end and Usenet's existing culture did not have the capacity to integrate the sheer number of new users. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
- Balgair 6y agoCan't we leverage this lesson then? If smaller groups can be integrated into the larger one with enough time, then the answer is straightforward. You can have very large internet forums, but new users need to be slowly integrated into the 'culture' piecemeal. Create a good culture, then break it out and parallelize it. New users get slotted into larger groups to learn the culture, then they can be sent on their way into the larger culture. Twitter Training Wheels?
- intended 6y agoThose forums exist I am sure, because ES is now an ancient concept. I'm guessing those forums now are invite only.
- arminiusreturns 6y agoExclusivity has been one of the primary driving factors in most major social web companies... and then at some point they just open the floodgates. I think, barring the extreme freedom of speech side like the chans, a good analysis and use of exclusivity would be a great way to do things. What gives you the "ticket in" is another topic that would take a lot of thinking and would depend on the site and it's goals.
- 6y ago
- intended 6y agoThese threads always are filled with first stab approaches and few people bringing up research or actual information about the problem. Social media discussions are near the blind spot for HN folk.
- ScottFree 6y agoThat reminds me of this webcomic from 2001. "Only once you can successfully wrestle a herd of monkeys will you truly be ready to manage your forum." https://megatokyo.com/strip/209 https://megatokyo.com/strip/209
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sgustard 6y agoI started an internet forum in 2006 whose audience was almost entirely female. It grew to a reasonable size, not huge, but what was remarkable was a nearly complete lack of trolls, arguments, and bad behavior. We saw that women just engage differently online, with a premium on expressing positive sentiments and encouraging each other to contribute constructively. Of course I don't want to generalize, but the removal of young men at their testosterone peak age from anonymous forums is remarkable.
- Nextgrid 6y agoI think that women can also be very toxic when given the right incentives. I saw certain MLM groups where women (and exclusively women, since these MLMs didn't cater to men) would say pretty nasty and offensive things to push their agenda and using the same idea of positivity, encouragement and "female empowerment" and any naysayer will get shut down supposedly because they are being negative or not supportive (completely overlooking the fact that they're hawking a scam). I am not sure whether women need an external trigger for this (such as the MLM in this example) whether as men tend to do it by themselves, or if you simply got lucky and happened to be surrounded by good people, especially in that early era when computers, internet access (for non-work purposes) and social networking was still relatively niche and acted as a filter compared to nowadays where every idiot has access to all those things.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoMLMs are the corporate equivalent of social networking - but worse. And they appeal to a certain kind of person. But it's a much more general problem. So much of what humans do is about creating Happy Brain and avoiding Unhappy Brain. We're held hostage by our chemical pathways, usually in ways we're not even aware of. We'd likely be more effective and have better survival potential if we could break out of the hedonic loop and not fall straight into the obvious traps.
- SuoDuanDao 6y agoI think there is a genuine difference in how men and women interact, online and off - different tolerances for confrontation might be part of it. More confrontations can lead to trolling or unnecessary flame wars, but also avoid the kind of misunderstandings that lead to festering resentment. I think bad behaviour is a human universal, but how it manifests might be quite different from community to community.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago"Don't start a forum" says the guy who helped found two of the most successful ones. Two things can be true here, 1) Running HN stressed out PG 2) Discouraging forum competitors significantly helps YC. Per YC etiquette, please explain your downvotes.
- nojvek 6y agoI don’t think pg is discouraging others from starting a forum. He’s merely saying running a forum has a lot more stress in moderating it than building the technology. But it could be that dang enjoys what pg found stressful. I was part of running a community website but I absolutely hated running the admin side of it. I just wanted to build pretty UI and make things work. I absolutely loathed responding to support emails. It drained me out. A non technical friend of ours loved the admin and people side. He would onboard users, write nice how to articles for others, resolve conflicts, respond to suooort emails. He did not care one bit about how it all worked, just that it worked and he could help others get value out of the site. Some people are good at building things, Some people are great at fostering built things.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago> I don’t think pg is discouraging others from starting a forum. He literally wrote "Don't start a forum". Yet, solutions to current problems with social media may be limited by the fact that only a few companies manage the content. PG is not motivated to innovate on social media tools as a builder or an investor. We need better forums with better moderation tools that enable more users to participate in moderation. It is possible to do within existing forums or a new one, so I would encourage innovation on this rather than discourage it. There are a hundred ways you could empower better communities using things like annotator agreement or automated appeals.
- forgingahead 6y ago"Don't run a forum" - this seems like bad advice. "Don't run a forum similar with reddit-style popularity rankings" might be a better description. Running a forum is part of managing a community, where ideas, advice and other positive things can be exchanged. If you're a startup, a community can help seed your initial userbase and give you valuable feedback to see if you're providing value to a group of people. That doesn't mean there aren't stressors, but I disagree with the blanket "don't do it, it's scary".
- xsmasher 6y agoNextdoor doesn't run on popularity ranking but still goes toxic on a regular basis.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mitchtbaum 6y agohttps://youtu.be/vN7HQrgakZU https://youtu.be/vN7HQrgakZU Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
- nojvek 6y agoI do like hn promotes ShowHN. Seeing the mammoth projects, new startups, weekends hacks, parodies is a lot more entertaining than the polarizing discussions on the other social networks. I just get a massive kick out of people building things and sharing them with the world. I’ll leave HN the day Show HN stops being a thing and all we see is how Google released their new chat app or some company FAANG acquired for a bajillion dollars.
- bane 6y agoIt's hard to state how invaluable HN is to me personally, and likely to the Internet as well. It's hard to say if the stress was worth it, but it created something really special.
- kiddico 6y agoSorry if I've been slow, but is the hn user "dang" "Daniel Gackle"? I never connected it to an irl name, I just figured it was an early grab at a fun username.
- detaro 6y agoyes. And he seems to enjoy the double meanings of the username
- moonchild 6y ago> @theshawwn: [dang] has had a habit of silencing some long-standing members of HN: yummyfajitas, mtgx, myself – for what seem to be inconsistent reasons. He also applies penalties that last for years, and people are too afraid to say anything. I feel bad saying this, but when Dan retires, I'll feel relieved. It's hard to overstate just how authoritarian he is, underneath that disarming personality. He reads every comment. You can't say anything without speaking to Dan, indirectly. Can some explain/clarify?
- DanBC 6y ago(I have no connection to the mods, all of this is just me guessing.) People who behave poorly, especially if it's something they've done for a long time, can dislike being held to account for that. dang has a range of tools available, and these get used to hold people to account for their destructive behaviours. These people get increasing levels of warnings before they eventually get banned. And then, when they've been banned, they see some other account that posts similar content that hasn't been banned and they say "inconsistent!". What they've missed is the "yet" part of "hasn't been banned yet" -- that other account may be banned in future, or if they drop the destructive behaviour they may have all the measures removed. > He also applies penalties that last for years, and people are too afraid to say anything. I don't know what dang's email account is like but I'm guessing it's full of people who are not too afraid to say anything.
- luckylion 6y ago> What they've missed is the "yet" part of "hasn't been banned yet" -- that other account may be banned in future, or if they drop the destructive behaviour they may have all the measures removed. That's a problem though. If you let some murderers roam free and when somebody says "you arrested me when I murdered somebody, why aren't you arresting them", you say "hey, you don't know that we don't arrest them, we're just haven't arrested them yet. Please wait 100 years to see whether we really don't arrest them". I don't know what the original comment was about etc, but "maybe it'll eventually be consistent" isn't a good answer to claims of inconsistency. Maybe it will, but it probably won't. If behavior is treated differently, the best prediction is that it will continue to be treated differently.
- anonmidniteshpr 6y ago@dang must smoke some really good herb to stay sane. So by "stress" does PG mean blood pressure rise, sweaty palms, urge to jog around the block twice, sleepless nights, or waking flashbacks? hmmm
- goto11 6y agoThe highest quality forum I know is AskHistorians on reddit. The content is amazing and it even seems to be getting better over time. They have very very strict moderation and the forum is notorious for how many posts are getting deleted by moderators (including all complaints about the strict moderation). But it works.
- switch11 6y agoPerhaps something people are leaving out ENTIRELY 1) It's not the Social Network is toxic OR Chasing engagement is toxic 2) Perhaps the TRUTH is that people themselves are FLAWED DEEPLY what does Political Correctness and Wishful Thinking say That you bring people together and they will solve big problems There will be world peace Everyone will learn to love each other What is reality telling us That whenever you bring people together their TRUE NATURE as Animals in a fight for Survival of the Fittest will come out Try any forum Try any online group Try any social network What do you see People showing the worst aspect of themselves If 95% of the time people are doing bad things Then why are we assuming that it is something to do with the TOOLS Why doesn't someone state the obvious People are animals Bring them together and they have herd mentality and do terrible things
- mathgenius 6y agoAfter the demise of slashdot (around 2008?), I hung out on technocrat.net, which was run by Bruce Perens. It was great, but then Perens decided to kill it because it was too stressful to run. (If memory serves me correctly.) Then I found HN. Language is too fragile & brittle to convey most of what we would like it to convey. People keep falling into this trap, and then getting irate when things go off the rails. This is a terrible confusion to have: if the meaning is not in the words, then where is it? The meaning is in the context, not in the symbols.
- chiefalchemist 6y agoContext _and_ intent. Things go sideways when false assumptions are made. Assuming a safe community is hostile is a path to unnecessary conflict. Assuming a well-intended statement is intended to be malicious is a path to complete communication meltdown. PC-ness and call out culture has hype-reduced human communication to mere words. That's not to how communication evolved. Yes. Words matter. But they are not the way humans communicate.
- ativzzz 6y ago> Words matter. But they are not the way humans communicate. People communicate any way they can. On online forums, we have to communicate with words as there is no other way (so far). > Assuming a well-intended statement is intended to be malicious is a path to complete communication meltdown. You're right, but this is just as much, and probably more so, the fault of the writer than the reader. Because like you said, so much of our communication is not using words, when we are limited to words, we have to be extra careful about which words we use and how we craft our message because the chance of being misunderstood is much higher.
- chiefalchemist 6y agoMy fave comms goto is: "It's not what you say, it's what they hear." - Frank Luntz Unfortunately, it pre-dates cancel culture and such. We've allowed "always assume the worst" to be normalized. We've made one (event) into a pattern. Communication is a two way street. If one side (i.e., the receiver) is intentionally undermining "the contract" then the processes is doomed. You can't have a two-way process where one half is trying their best to communicate, and the other is trying their best not to do so. It doesn't work that way. Which is obvious at this point. Insanity is at an all time high.
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago>> dominic @casiotone · 13h >> unless his job is "maintaining a worryingly high level of white supremacist comments" no he does not I remember, when I was in high school, I read a book about arithmomancy, an occult practice that basically consists of adding up, dividing etc numbers until you get to a result that has some esoteric significance. For example, if you divide 300, the number of the Spartans in Thermopylae, by 100, the number of years in a century, you find 3, 3 is the number of the holy trinity, therefore the sacrifice of the Spartans at Thermopylae heralds the Lamb of God, who sacrificed himself to bring on the glory of the Trinity in a new aeon of the human spirit. Something along those lines- you basically do some base arithmetic and jump around meanings and symbols like a little frog from lillipad to lillipad. Anyway, after I read that book, I started experimenting with my date of birth, specifically the day of the month, let's say it was made from the digits in XY. After spending a whole week obsessively (but how else) deriving all sorts of deeply meaningful, mystical insights about the relation of XY to the month and year of my birth, the births of my parents, my friends, Jesus Christ, Olaf Palme and Gina Lolobrigita, of all people, I started seeing "XY" e v e r y w h e r e. Like, I'd go to the loo and my eyes would idly scan the surroundings and find the two digits, XY, on the back of a shampoo bottle, or I'd see them aaalmost forming in the foam at the bottom of the bathtub, or the steam on the mirror, or wherever really. It took me a while to get over it. XY everywhere! What does this tell us? That if you look for something hard enough, you will notice it to the exclusion of every other detail around it, even if every other detail appears with the same frequencey as that one thing you're seeing - and you're seeing it because your entire mind is actively looking for it. Aye, you got it: confirmation bias. So with "white supermacist" (or sexist, classist, genderist, whateverist) comments on HN. There's always someone who thinks HN leans one way in whatever polarised debate. Then there's always someone else who thinks it leans the other way. Because HN doesn't lean either way. It's just, people come on here wanting to find a certain opinion that they absolutely want to do battle with. So they lower their visor and through its cross-shaped slit they see what they want to see. And notice nothing else. So, "HN is white supremacist". Honestly.
- DanBC 6y agoYou've written a lot of words which fail to address anything in real life: there are plenty of openly racist, misogynistic comments on HN that don't get flagged, they don't get downvotes, and often get upvotes. People aren't making this up.
- KKKKkkkk1 6y agoI'm curious what was the motivation for keeping HN going. It doesn't seem like a large capital sink, but apparently has extremely high costs otherwise. Paul is a man who is very smart about allocating resources and effort. Why HN?
- JayInt 6y agoSo, I run a company called https://www.localhalo.com/ https://www.localhalo.com/ it builds local communities a bit like discord/slack but all geo-fenced. We found that social utility is how you solve a LOT of these issues. If someone is going to be negative on your platform then give them the 'action' instead for that pain. In local this is normally an issue with a neighbour, something for the HOA or something for Local Gov't. Just make them slackbot-esque buttons/commands. Give reacting features for others to support and you've turned decenters into your most active patrons. The trick with social utility is only giving access to solutions that better everyone. People are lazy and if they can find a single way to do 80/20 of their community wants it normally produces good-actors.
- dang 6y agoYou should post this as a Show HN when you're ready. I think the community here would be interested to discuss it. See https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html and the tips at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638. If you want, send a draft to hn@ycombinator.com and I'll try to help you with feedback similar to how I help YC startups with their launches (https://news.ycombinator.com/launches https://news.ycombinator.com/launches - that's a YC-only thing but Show HNs are similar). Just realize that I can't necessarily reply quickly. The inbox can be brutal. Same offer goes for anyone who wants some advice about how to present their work to HN.