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HN is not pursuing 10%/week growth, "engagement" etc. It doesn't care for bots, viral posts, there's a small, definable ruleset and largely enforceable. It nat

HN is not pursuing 10%/week growth, "engagement" etc. It doesn't care for bots, viral posts, there's a small, definable ruleset and largely enforceable. It naturally attracts people interested in its themes and subjects, and doesn't try to cater to everyone needs. Hell, it isn't even trying to be beautiful or having any order other than chronological timeline and upvoted posts! No wonder it hasn't become a toxic wasteland.

airhead969 5y ago
That's definitely true. Without messing up a good thing (HN), I wonder though how similar community platforms could be constructed incrementally better in terms of reasonableness, fairness, ethical/principled/respectful debate, curiosity, quality people, and signal. It might be bad analogies but the lack of flash a-la Drudge Report (haven't seen it in years) or the old Fry's Electronics (stores and their website). I think it somewhat deters engagement addiction and focuses on content.
cryptoz 5y ago
> No wonder it hasn't become a toxic wasteland. It is a toxic wasteland, though, at least sometimes. Also depends on who you are and how you experience the world - HN can be a very ugly place. HN is no cakewalk. There are lots of very vocal climate deniers, homophobes, Nazis, etc. here. I've been called hateful slurs on HN that nobody has said to me anywhere else. Much of this flies under the radar of the mods and the users are frequently not warned or banned. HN suffers all the same problems as Twitter or any of the others.
- everdrive 5y ago
  Twitter is dominated by outrage and disinformation. HN very much is not. You may still encounter conversations with people who hold terrible views, but they remain conversations. I've never been downvoted for making a controversial point on HN. And, I have ONLY been downvoted for making glib, lazy, or intellectually weak arguments. This is exactly how it should be.
  - cryptoz 5y ago
    Your experience on HN does not resemble mine at all. I'm frequently downvoted for controversial opinions. And I see a lot of outrage and disinformation here. And on twitter I see little outrage and disinformation. Our experiences are so far apart on social media that I'm not sure anecdotes will do much for the conversation here.
    - everdrive 5y ago
      How depressing if true =( Can you point to some example topics I should keep an eye out for?
      - marksbrown 5y ago
        Anything critical of the failure that is the United States, it's crumbling democracy or the Frank insanity inflicted upon the world by the psychopaths operating out of silicon valley. Unbridled Capitalism of the American variety is cruel and big tech is complicit in propagating antidemocratic efforts through walled gardens and mass tailored propaganda. How's that?
  - na85 5y ago
    >I've never been downvoted for making a controversial point on HN. And, I have ONLY been downvoted for making glib, lazy, or intellectually weak arguments. This is exactly how it should be. That's probably because you don't post any opinions that the HN hivemind finds controversial. Stray outside the lines just a bit and expect moderator censure and downvotes/flags.
    - Siira 5y ago
      Flags and moderator actions are also much rarer, but controversial stuff does get downvoted quickly unless it’s quite high quality.
    - kbenson 5y ago
      It's hard but possible, I find, to post and discuss controversial things. You have to be very carefull how you present the topic, and you have to put a lot more effort into the discussion than you normally might to make sure it doesn't devolve, but if you wade through and cut off the drive-by commenters that misunderstand your position because they aren't actually bothering to think critically about it,and try to try to keep the discussion it on track, you sometimes get very interesting discussions out of it. Sometimes I end up softening or changing someone's position on something, sometimes I soften or change mine or learn a lot of new things, and I have to imagine that happens with some lurkers as well, and I'm not sure what more I could hope for, besides wishing it was easier sometimes.
- ncann 5y ago
  Certain topics like politics or war or religion or LGBT will always tend to produce flame wars and "toxic wasteland" no matter which platform. The technical threads are usually a lot better.
- lolinder 5y ago
  The difference is visibility. A few hours into a conversation, the top two comments are, more often than not, a well-reasoned argument for one side and a well-reasoned rebuttal. If you start in on a thread while it's early, you'll see a lot of garbage, but that tends to float to the bottom over time. In general, the HN system (tech+mods+community) rewards thoughtful content and penalizes shallow nonsense. Twitter is the opposite. The most inflammatory comments trigger the most engagement, and so get the most visibility.
  - cryptoz 5y ago
    I don't agree with that. I think often hours in, the top comments often get more offensive here. Not less. The garbage floating to the bottom is not my experience here. > In general, the HN system (tech+mods+community) rewards thoughtful content and penalizes shallow nonsense I don't see this happening on HN. The shallow nonsense isn't the problem, it's the hateful opinions and "carefully reasoned, smart sounding" racism that is the problem. Calling it shallow nonsense makes it sound like no big deal or low effort hate posts. But that's not what I'm talking about. People say the worst things here but they use a large vocabulary and so it seems to get a pass. The hate here is very similar to the hate I see elsewhere and often it is much much worse here than on Twitter, in my personal experience.
    - lolinder 5y ago
      Ah, okay, I understand better what you're saying. So you do perceive Twitter as different than HN, but only in quality of writing, not in lack of hateful content. Can you give an example of a thread that turned out that way? I'm genuinely curious if I've been missing something, or if I've just managed to steer clear of topics that end up like that.
    - emptysongglass 5y ago
      I'm on Hacker News more than I care to admit and I don't see evidence of this widespread racism you proclaim. Please provide evidence if you're going to make these wild accusations.
    - airhead969 5y ago
- Siira 5y ago
  Please provide some specific examples. Even with examples, the important question is about how frequent they are, but without examples, your statement is just your personal experience. PS: Your usage of “smart racism,” “nazis,” “homophobes” etc are strong bayesian evidence (to me) that you’re just looking to guilt-trip people and victimize yourself. The only kind of racism I have seen on HN is the kind I see literally everywhere: people don’t really care about people not in their bubbles. This is better named selfishness than racism, and it’s inherent in human nature. (If you’re curious, I am middle-eastern, and not exactly binary myself; I have been abused when I was younger for being “transgenderish.” Which kind of forced me to adopt more conforming, binary social masks.)
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    I've seen explicit scientistic (scientific-sounding) racism on HN somewhat frequently, usually as a mintoriy opinion, but somewhat tolerated - generally in discussions about IQ, stuff like The Bell Curve. Homophobia I've seen much more rarely, though maybe I didn't hit the right topics. I've also seen anti-religious sentiments and anti-chinese nationalism popping up pretty proeminintely every now and again. Climate change denial is also rarely missing from any longer conversation about climate. Edit: Here's an example that eventually got flagged, but sparked a long conversation that had a few supporters as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26990070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26990070
    - _Algernon_ 5y ago
      You example is an example of the system working. It eventually got removed by mods, and the parent comment you're linking to called the behaviour out. I'm not sure what you'd like to see changed in this case?
      - tsimionescu 5y ago
        Dang's response came 4 days after the comment was written. Before being flagged, it was downvoted, but not to hell - it was gray, but still readable, like most of that poster's other comments. So I would say that someone may be justified in feeling somewhat attacked and not that well defended on such topics. As I said, it's a minority opinion, but it is somewhat tolerated. Ideally, when someone claims that they can tell how smart someone is from how they look, that should be downvoted to oblivion and receive overwhelming counter-evidence or no attention at all. Of course, what happened was quite OK, and much better than many other corners of the internet. But still, it's proof that that there is some explicit racism on HN, not just people not caring about others.
ABCLAW 5y ago
Right, so the problem is making your KPIs exclusively about measurable 'growth', rather than optimizing for making the best communities possible. It isn't inherently social media or democracy that's the problem, it's the incentives behind it.
- mwarkentin 5y ago
  A little ironic that this community was also founded by the guy who wrote http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html :D
subsubzero 5y ago
I loathe all ads, so HN is great in that aspect. The design is good with its beige and orange, very simple no pretentiousness. Also the community is smart and usually thoughtful in both replies and posts. Its really the only 'social media' I participate in.
- theodric 5y ago
  The user base is sufficiently pretentious to bring the site up to the expected pretentiousness baseline for an SV product. Just needs a bit of quiet ukulele music in the background to really get it over the line consistently. /s

airhead969 5y ago

That's definitely true. Without messing up a good thing (HN), I wonder though how similar community platforms could be constructed incrementally better in terms of reasonableness, fairness, ethical/principled/respectful debate, curiosity, quality people, and signal. It might be bad analogies but the lack of flash a-la Drudge Report (haven't seen it in years) or the old Fry's Electronics (stores and their website). I think it somewhat deters engagement addiction and focuses on content.

cryptoz 5y ago

> No wonder it hasn't become a toxic wasteland. It is a toxic wasteland, though, at least sometimes. Also depends on who you are and how you experience the world - HN can be a very ugly place. HN is no cakewalk. There are lots of very vocal climate deniers, homophobes, Nazis, etc. here. I've been called hateful slurs on HN that nobody has said to me anywhere else. Much of this flies under the radar of the mods and the users are frequently not warned or banned. HN suffers all the same problems as Twitter or any of the others.

everdrive 5y ago
Twitter is dominated by outrage and disinformation. HN very much is not. You may still encounter conversations with people who hold terrible views, but they remain conversations. I've never been downvoted for making a controversial point on HN. And, I have ONLY been downvoted for making glib, lazy, or intellectually weak arguments. This is exactly how it should be.
- cryptoz 5y ago
  Your experience on HN does not resemble mine at all. I'm frequently downvoted for controversial opinions. And I see a lot of outrage and disinformation here. And on twitter I see little outrage and disinformation. Our experiences are so far apart on social media that I'm not sure anecdotes will do much for the conversation here.
  - everdrive 5y ago
    How depressing if true =( Can you point to some example topics I should keep an eye out for?
    - marksbrown 5y ago
      Anything critical of the failure that is the United States, it's crumbling democracy or the Frank insanity inflicted upon the world by the psychopaths operating out of silicon valley. Unbridled Capitalism of the American variety is cruel and big tech is complicit in propagating antidemocratic efforts through walled gardens and mass tailored propaganda. How's that?
- na85 5y ago
  >I've never been downvoted for making a controversial point on HN. And, I have ONLY been downvoted for making glib, lazy, or intellectually weak arguments. This is exactly how it should be. That's probably because you don't post any opinions that the HN hivemind finds controversial. Stray outside the lines just a bit and expect moderator censure and downvotes/flags.
  - Siira 5y ago
    Flags and moderator actions are also much rarer, but controversial stuff does get downvoted quickly unless it’s quite high quality.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    It's hard but possible, I find, to post and discuss controversial things. You have to be very carefull how you present the topic, and you have to put a lot more effort into the discussion than you normally might to make sure it doesn't devolve, but if you wade through and cut off the drive-by commenters that misunderstand your position because they aren't actually bothering to think critically about it,and try to try to keep the discussion it on track, you sometimes get very interesting discussions out of it. Sometimes I end up softening or changing someone's position on something, sometimes I soften or change mine or learn a lot of new things, and I have to imagine that happens with some lurkers as well, and I'm not sure what more I could hope for, besides wishing it was easier sometimes.
ncann 5y ago
Certain topics like politics or war or religion or LGBT will always tend to produce flame wars and "toxic wasteland" no matter which platform. The technical threads are usually a lot better.
lolinder 5y ago
The difference is visibility. A few hours into a conversation, the top two comments are, more often than not, a well-reasoned argument for one side and a well-reasoned rebuttal. If you start in on a thread while it's early, you'll see a lot of garbage, but that tends to float to the bottom over time. In general, the HN system (tech+mods+community) rewards thoughtful content and penalizes shallow nonsense. Twitter is the opposite. The most inflammatory comments trigger the most engagement, and so get the most visibility.
- cryptoz 5y ago
  I don't agree with that. I think often hours in, the top comments often get more offensive here. Not less. The garbage floating to the bottom is not my experience here. > In general, the HN system (tech+mods+community) rewards thoughtful content and penalizes shallow nonsense I don't see this happening on HN. The shallow nonsense isn't the problem, it's the hateful opinions and "carefully reasoned, smart sounding" racism that is the problem. Calling it shallow nonsense makes it sound like no big deal or low effort hate posts. But that's not what I'm talking about. People say the worst things here but they use a large vocabulary and so it seems to get a pass. The hate here is very similar to the hate I see elsewhere and often it is much much worse here than on Twitter, in my personal experience.
  - lolinder 5y ago
    Ah, okay, I understand better what you're saying. So you do perceive Twitter as different than HN, but only in quality of writing, not in lack of hateful content. Can you give an example of a thread that turned out that way? I'm genuinely curious if I've been missing something, or if I've just managed to steer clear of topics that end up like that.
  - emptysongglass 5y ago
    I'm on Hacker News more than I care to admit and I don't see evidence of this widespread racism you proclaim. Please provide evidence if you're going to make these wild accusations.
  - airhead969 5y ago
Siira 5y ago
Please provide some specific examples. Even with examples, the important question is about how frequent they are, but without examples, your statement is just your personal experience. PS: Your usage of “smart racism,” “nazis,” “homophobes” etc are strong bayesian evidence (to me) that you’re just looking to guilt-trip people and victimize yourself. The only kind of racism I have seen on HN is the kind I see literally everywhere: people don’t really care about people not in their bubbles. This is better named selfishness than racism, and it’s inherent in human nature. (If you’re curious, I am middle-eastern, and not exactly binary myself; I have been abused when I was younger for being “transgenderish.” Which kind of forced me to adopt more conforming, binary social masks.)
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  I've seen explicit scientistic (scientific-sounding) racism on HN somewhat frequently, usually as a mintoriy opinion, but somewhat tolerated - generally in discussions about IQ, stuff like The Bell Curve. Homophobia I've seen much more rarely, though maybe I didn't hit the right topics. I've also seen anti-religious sentiments and anti-chinese nationalism popping up pretty proeminintely every now and again. Climate change denial is also rarely missing from any longer conversation about climate. Edit: Here's an example that eventually got flagged, but sparked a long conversation that had a few supporters as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26990070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26990070
  - _Algernon_ 5y ago
    You example is an example of the system working. It eventually got removed by mods, and the parent comment you're linking to called the behaviour out. I'm not sure what you'd like to see changed in this case?
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      Dang's response came 4 days after the comment was written. Before being flagged, it was downvoted, but not to hell - it was gray, but still readable, like most of that poster's other comments. So I would say that someone may be justified in feeling somewhat attacked and not that well defended on such topics. As I said, it's a minority opinion, but it is somewhat tolerated. Ideally, when someone claims that they can tell how smart someone is from how they look, that should be downvoted to oblivion and receive overwhelming counter-evidence or no attention at all. Of course, what happened was quite OK, and much better than many other corners of the internet. But still, it's proof that that there is some explicit racism on HN, not just people not caring about others.

ABCLAW 5y ago

Right, so the problem is making your KPIs exclusively about measurable 'growth', rather than optimizing for making the best communities possible. It isn't inherently social media or democracy that's the problem, it's the incentives behind it.

mwarkentin 5y ago
A little ironic that this community was also founded by the guy who wrote http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html :D

subsubzero 5y ago

I loathe all ads, so HN is great in that aspect. The design is good with its beige and orange, very simple no pretentiousness. Also the community is smart and usually thoughtful in both replies and posts. Its really the only 'social media' I participate in.

theodric 5y ago
The user base is sufficiently pretentious to bring the site up to the expected pretentiousness baseline for an SV product. Just needs a bit of quiet ukulele music in the background to really get it over the line consistently. /s