4 ms·

I've never quite understood HackerNews's obsession with reddit over other social networks. I'd love if someone could it explain it

k0stas 6y ago
It's a YC startup from the first ever batch and HN was created to try to recapture what Reddit was like at the beginning.
renewiltord 6y ago
It's an absolute phenomenon, man. Recommendations, discussion, backstage access to celebs. And it's YC.
- echelon 6y ago
  > It's an absolute phenomenon, man. It was. Now it's a cesspool. > Recommendations, discussion, It's become the worst kind of echo chamber. The comments feel like they're written by GPT-3, and there's a lot of prideful ignorance or confidence when it's undeserved. I had to laugh when they added "avatars" and everyone started setting theirs to dancing seizure cockroaches. My avatar is the Digg logo. > backstage access to celebs AMA was sincere when it started. Now it's just lame cash grab marketing and self-promotion. > And it's YC. Yeah. I feel like they exited too early. Conde Nast made all the money here.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    This is why I exclusively stick to technical subreddits. r/programming suffered from severe moderation a few years back which knocked me out of even looking at it (posts were heavily moderated and their front page wouldn't change for days). But the various programming language subreddits (in aggregate) make for good reading for me.
  - Diederich 6y ago
    > It was. Now it's a cesspool. All of it? https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians for example.
    - chx 6y ago
      AskHistorians moderation is legendary -- and unique. Tiny subreddits (like usbchardware where I am mod) are easy to keep nice. But most larges ones are horrible, horrible toxic cesspools. It is basically a phenomenon that communities break off the larger one when it becomes too toxic -- but all too often the larger one won't wither. /r/canada and /r/onguardforthee/ is a classic example. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/7z706y/whats_going_on_in_rcanada_eh/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/7z706y/whats_... and an example post from /r/canada within the last hour, you don't need to look far for stuff like this "I feel like ISIS would be better the liberals at this point for canada." Let's not even mention the childfree subs because what the original one became is shudder
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - rimliu 6y ago
    Sad to say it, but HN got worse. On reddit you can at least still choose some different subreddit with different culture.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Nah man, that's the beauty of Reddit. Reddit isn't a single thing. /r/esp8266 is dope. /r/prusa3d is ledge. They figured out the mop/geek problem by just allowing arbitrary namespacing. Way better than any free community. Maybe Metafilter is better if you want to spend the $5. Dunno. Lobste.rs tried that for technical stuff with tags and that engine is really powerful but the community never took off. HN, of course, well, you know what it's like here when people of diverse interests and moral foundations are placed together.
7786655 6y ago
HN is basically a Reddit clone (deliberatly so, it was created before Reddit has subreddits). Since the sites are so similar it kind of makes sense that they attract the same type of people.
lukecameron 6y ago
Reddit was funded by ycombinator in summer ‘05, which probably explains part of it. Then the rest I would say is down to similarities between the two sites (primarily acting as link aggregators, although reddit has gradually diverged from this).
wodenokoto 6y ago
They were basically the same. That front page could easily be today’s front page on HN. One of the founders is still quite active on HN. I believe it was Paul Graham who recommended them to create subreddits. They have some shared history at least. Reddit still holds a ton of geeky subreddits but has grown into this monster on the outside. I also imagine most HN’ers get they technical news from reddit and HN. And honestly, I just can’t see what other platform HN should obsess about. Slashdot, maybe?
lemmsjid 6y ago
Reddit is one of the largest sites that embodies the earliest and most Utopic use-cases of the Internet: largely anonymous parties discussing different topics. The size to which it has scaled makes it an inherently fascinating artifact. At the same time it embodies the dystopic outcomes of the Internet as well. For example it does not embody the decentralization of Usenet and is instead run by a single company. Its back-and-forths about acceptable speech and moderator power remind us of the tension between everything goes free speech and formenting and abetting hate groups. The twist it added (while not pioneered) to historical discussion boards, the upvoting and karma systems, lead to a very interesting hive mind phenomenon where you can very much see a meta personality at play based on the actions of millions of actual personalities. And then on the other side of the count, you see sophisticated attempts by smaller groups to manipulate the larger groups' opinions through both fraudulent and overt means. Alongside that are the side effects of majority-rules opinionizing, where alternate narratives get vaporized, or seem inherently laughable because one knows they'll be downvoted, which seems like an offshoot of mob mentality and lends a weird causality shift to the discussion, where the focus turns to accruing social capital rather than sharing honest opinions. All in all quite fascinating if you're interested in that kind of stuff; not fascinating at all if you aren't. But as Hacker News is structured in a similar fashion, it's pretty clear the general audience would have an interest overlap with Reddit (I certainly follow the programming section there).

k0stas 6y ago

It's a YC startup from the first ever batch and HN was created to try to recapture what Reddit was like at the beginning.

renewiltord 6y ago

It's an absolute phenomenon, man. Recommendations, discussion, backstage access to celebs. And it's YC.

echelon 6y ago
> It's an absolute phenomenon, man. It was. Now it's a cesspool. > Recommendations, discussion, It's become the worst kind of echo chamber. The comments feel like they're written by GPT-3, and there's a lot of prideful ignorance or confidence when it's undeserved. I had to laugh when they added "avatars" and everyone started setting theirs to dancing seizure cockroaches. My avatar is the Digg logo. > backstage access to celebs AMA was sincere when it started. Now it's just lame cash grab marketing and self-promotion. > And it's YC. Yeah. I feel like they exited too early. Conde Nast made all the money here.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  This is why I exclusively stick to technical subreddits. r/programming suffered from severe moderation a few years back which knocked me out of even looking at it (posts were heavily moderated and their front page wouldn't change for days). But the various programming language subreddits (in aggregate) make for good reading for me.
- Diederich 6y ago
  > It was. Now it's a cesspool. All of it? https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians for example.
  - chx 6y ago
    AskHistorians moderation is legendary -- and unique. Tiny subreddits (like usbchardware where I am mod) are easy to keep nice. But most larges ones are horrible, horrible toxic cesspools. It is basically a phenomenon that communities break off the larger one when it becomes too toxic -- but all too often the larger one won't wither. /r/canada and /r/onguardforthee/ is a classic example. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/7z706y/whats_going_on_in_rcanada_eh/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/7z706y/whats_... and an example post from /r/canada within the last hour, you don't need to look far for stuff like this "I feel like ISIS would be better the liberals at this point for canada." Let's not even mention the childfree subs because what the original one became is shudder
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- rimliu 6y ago
  Sad to say it, but HN got worse. On reddit you can at least still choose some different subreddit with different culture.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Nah man, that's the beauty of Reddit. Reddit isn't a single thing. /r/esp8266 is dope. /r/prusa3d is ledge. They figured out the mop/geek problem by just allowing arbitrary namespacing. Way better than any free community. Maybe Metafilter is better if you want to spend the $5. Dunno. Lobste.rs tried that for technical stuff with tags and that engine is really powerful but the community never took off. HN, of course, well, you know what it's like here when people of diverse interests and moral foundations are placed together.

7786655 6y ago

HN is basically a Reddit clone (deliberatly so, it was created before Reddit has subreddits). Since the sites are so similar it kind of makes sense that they attract the same type of people.

lukecameron 6y ago

Reddit was funded by ycombinator in summer ‘05, which probably explains part of it. Then the rest I would say is down to similarities between the two sites (primarily acting as link aggregators, although reddit has gradually diverged from this).

wodenokoto 6y ago

They were basically the same. That front page could easily be today’s front page on HN. One of the founders is still quite active on HN. I believe it was Paul Graham who recommended them to create subreddits. They have some shared history at least. Reddit still holds a ton of geeky subreddits but has grown into this monster on the outside. I also imagine most HN’ers get they technical news from reddit and HN. And honestly, I just can’t see what other platform HN should obsess about. Slashdot, maybe?

lemmsjid 6y ago

Reddit is one of the largest sites that embodies the earliest and most Utopic use-cases of the Internet: largely anonymous parties discussing different topics. The size to which it has scaled makes it an inherently fascinating artifact. At the same time it embodies the dystopic outcomes of the Internet as well. For example it does not embody the decentralization of Usenet and is instead run by a single company. Its back-and-forths about acceptable speech and moderator power remind us of the tension between everything goes free speech and formenting and abetting hate groups. The twist it added (while not pioneered) to historical discussion boards, the upvoting and karma systems, lead to a very interesting hive mind phenomenon where you can very much see a meta personality at play based on the actions of millions of actual personalities. And then on the other side of the count, you see sophisticated attempts by smaller groups to manipulate the larger groups' opinions through both fraudulent and overt means. Alongside that are the side effects of majority-rules opinionizing, where alternate narratives get vaporized, or seem inherently laughable because one knows they'll be downvoted, which seems like an offshoot of mob mentality and lends a weird causality shift to the discussion, where the focus turns to accruing social capital rather than sharing honest opinions. All in all quite fascinating if you're interested in that kind of stuff; not fascinating at all if you aren't. But as Hacker News is structured in a similar fashion, it's pretty clear the general audience would have an interest overlap with Reddit (I certainly follow the programming section there).