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Ask HN: Would you pay for Hacker News?
- dudul 5y agoNo
- offtop5 5y agoI'd allowed tech related advertisers to bid on sponsored post, maybe one per hour. So for example, if you pay $1,000 you get to have your website advertised at the top of the page for an hour, and this would of course go up depending on how many people are trying to buy the space
- david927 5y agoThe first years after it started, probably. The last five years or so? No. Not because there's any change to the site, but because technology has become a ghost town. There are no interesting startups; there's no interesting, burgeoning software technology. It's all tumbleweeds and boarded-up store fronts.
- Graffur 5y agoWhat would be an example of interesting startups in the past?
- watermelon59 5y agoNot OP but Dropbox for example was unique and game-changing when it showed up. I agree with OP that nothing interesting like that has shown up in years. It's all "we're gonna make your kubernetes better" now and hardly anything that makes an actual impact on your daily life as an individual.
- Nicholas_C 5y agoI think there are plenty of startups right now that will be gamechanging in hindsight. No code/low code startups, for instance, could be some of them.
- gd94 5y agoYeah but even dropbox got negative comments here. You never know which startup is interesting unless you see it in action
- david927 5y agoOk, good point
- muzani 5y agoThe most interesting one of last year was Clubhouse. It's so disappointing to go through Product Hunt now and find the best thing out there is a calendar appointment app with less friction or some replacement for Excel, which does a niche thing well but only works on Google Chrome and is slow af.
- LinuxBender 5y agoProbably not. It would be somewhat backwards in my opinion. The community members of this site are in many ways performing a crowd-sourcing think-tank for new ideas, business ventures, etc.. even if at times it does not appear that way and sometimes strays deep into rabbit holes.
- potta_coffee 5y agoNo.
- majoram 5y agoIf they paywalled HN, I would finally be free from this place.
- krapp 5y agoI already pay enough in terms of time, productivity and sanity.
- bnchrch 5y agoToday? No. In the past? Maybe. Hacker news used to be the place you’d come for the cutting edge in technology and entrepreneurship surrounded by interesting people pushing the boundaries day by day. Nowadays it’s none of that. You no longer stumble upon the bleeding edge and most of the comment section is a wasteland of negativity (pot kettle I know). It seems to be the natural progression of technical communities. Stackoverflow, /r/programming and now Hacker News.
- WnZ39p0Dgydaz1 5y agoSad but I feel the same way. I still enjoy reading HN comments and there are occasional gems among them, but most posts on HN these days reflect the mainstream majority opinion, the same platitudes and topics over and over again. It's not people at the forefront of new technology. I guess it's the "crossing the chasm" effect. I don't know any better place though. I find myself using specific small subreddits more and more recently even though I was never a big reddit user in the past.
- jamil7 5y agoMaybe it’s a reflection of the industry as a whole? Or maybe these communities are elsewhere now.
- clownpenis_fart 5y agoI don't know that it's none of that, it does seem to still be full of Smartest People In The Room
- MarblePillar 5y agoWhere is the new frontier?
- Jach 5y agoIt doesn't yet exist, and the old world is gone, same with so many professional magazines (RIP Dr. Dobb's). Enjoy the transitory period.
- 5y ago
- cm2012 5y agoYes, it would improve discussion quality
- Wilem82 5y agoAny closed community ends up as a cult, derangement reinforced through the circular patting on the backs. HN already got a bit of a loony reputation (for example, see the comment about being a think tank), and it’ll get even worse behind a paywall.
- bad_username 5y agoYes. HN is a breath of fresh air, one of the last places on the Internet governed by the merit of content and discussion. I would pay just to support it (not that it needs it, I think).
- i_have_an_idea 5y agoNo. Due to the moderation and flagging dynamics, this place is an echo chamber and it wouldn't be worth it for me.
- dw-im-here 5y agoNo fucking way
- 2rsf 5y agoNo
- muzani 5y agoI would pay, but I don't think it would be the same if it had a paywall.
- a_lifters_life 5y agoNo
- sdevonoes 5y agoNo. The moment one needs to pay for HN, an alternative "free" HN would emerge... so why would I pay? Besides, the authors of HN are already getting paid for this site (e.g., HN is world-wide known by almost every developer out there, startup founders wannabes consider PG a god, etc.)
- EamonnMR 5y agoIf you wait a paid forum, The Well still exists.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- matt_the_bass 5y agoI used to pay for it back when it was printed and came in the mail.
- approxim8ion 5y agoNo, the community would become significantly more insular if it was paid only. I also don't think I could afford it, honestly.
- tracer4201 5y agoNo. Some of the content is really interesting but not enough to justify paying. And the discussions in my opinion aren’t that much better than Reddit. A few very insightful comments otherwise people censoring opinions and get border line personal attacks over differences in opinions.