4 ms·

HN has always been a mixed bag: It takes some work to sift through the links and comment section to find gold. Some times I come across old threads in Google s

HN has always been a mixed bag: It takes some work to sift through the links and comment section to find gold. Some times I come across old threads in Google searches and I’m shocked by the quality of the older discourse. It’s much harder to find threads with deep, nuanced conversations today than it was even a few years ago. The sharpest change happened around the start of the pandemic when everyone started working from home. I think HN became a social outlet for more people all at once. Combine that with pandemic-related frustrations and the vibe here became sharply angrier. Even dang has mentioned the pandemic-related influx of angry users in a few comments. Lately I’m also surprised at how anti-tech and pro-regulation the comment sections have become. Recent Facebook threads are the best example of a lot of angry, low-effort comments (do we really need 100 comments from different people bragging about quitting Facebook every time the topic comes up?).

hidden-spyder 5y ago
For me, I've noticed a downfall in the quality of content that ends up on the front page compared to pre-pandemic times. Quite a lot of good stuff gets lost in the "new" page.
selfhoster11 5y ago
I agree. As of very recently, a VERY large proportion of my comments have been downvoted, and some of them even went greyed out. I used to often post against the grain of broad consensus of the site (think: the "Tenth Man" style rule, whether it's fictional or not) to inject a perspective of someone from a very different background. Nobody had a problem with that. It's as if people are far more irritable these days and just won't engage with the comment beyond hitting the downvote button. For the anti-tech and pro-regulation sentiment, I admit I've been a part of that. I cannot disagree that hundreds of posts saying the same thing are monotonous, but I cannot bring myself to criticise it because then I'd be silencing a PoV that is mine.
- krapp 5y ago
  >It's as if people are far more irritable these days and just won't engage with the comment beyond hitting the downvote button. Given the viputerative nature of discussions here, that's probably better for the health of the community (and your own mental and emotional health) than posting a comment most of the time..
- xkbarkar 5y ago
  Fully agree. I see very many well written though provoking comments these days almost completely greyed out. In 2019 they would have provoked discussion and created interesting threads. I am pretty sure the people that follow have not changed all that much. I kinda suspect bots and big scale opinion moderation. You can usually tell in the comments and weird down/upvote spikes that the concensus is artificially generated. The only discorse censored are one way. Against concensus. Up until early 2020, being agains concensus was perfectly fine on HN granted you provided a quality source. And usually made for fun though provoking reads. HN has not sunken so low on opinion sharing that it had become the absolute disaster that reddit has. Sadly its getting close though.
- demygale 5y ago
  Here’s my tenth man take: playing devils advocate is the laziest form of intellectual engagement and lends weight to positions that should have no weight at all.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    I don't play devil's advocate position for fun. I do it because my stance on a lot of issues deviates from the HN's consensus, and I want my point of view to be at least considered.
akg_67 5y ago
> It’s much harder to find threads with deep, nuanced conversations today than it was even a few years ago. My impression has been similar. The original discourse, logical reasoning and critical thinking is seriously lacking now in discussions. I see higher frequency of "citation needed" type of low effort comments that assume no one posting can have original thinking without it being thought by someone else and published already somewhere else online. In similar vain, responses seems to be very severe and personal when someone finds something online contrary to what someone posted. More and more HN participants seem to assume if it is published and available online, specially in research paper format or discoursed by a "popular" personality, it has more credibility irrespective of quality. On the positive side, I see lot more variety of topics discussed on HN, previously topics used to be mostly tech and startup related and very infrequently finance related. Now, I can find discussions even related to energy, material science, medical sciences etc though lacking in depth. IMO, overall HN reflects rest of the internet, availability of more and more information easily accessible has reduced the ability to critically analyze and logically reason through problems and present arguments.

hidden-spyder 5y ago

For me, I've noticed a downfall in the quality of content that ends up on the front page compared to pre-pandemic times. Quite a lot of good stuff gets lost in the "new" page.

selfhoster11 5y ago

I agree. As of very recently, a VERY large proportion of my comments have been downvoted, and some of them even went greyed out. I used to often post against the grain of broad consensus of the site (think: the "Tenth Man" style rule, whether it's fictional or not) to inject a perspective of someone from a very different background. Nobody had a problem with that. It's as if people are far more irritable these days and just won't engage with the comment beyond hitting the downvote button. For the anti-tech and pro-regulation sentiment, I admit I've been a part of that. I cannot disagree that hundreds of posts saying the same thing are monotonous, but I cannot bring myself to criticise it because then I'd be silencing a PoV that is mine.

krapp 5y ago
>It's as if people are far more irritable these days and just won't engage with the comment beyond hitting the downvote button. Given the viputerative nature of discussions here, that's probably better for the health of the community (and your own mental and emotional health) than posting a comment most of the time..
xkbarkar 5y ago
Fully agree. I see very many well written though provoking comments these days almost completely greyed out. In 2019 they would have provoked discussion and created interesting threads. I am pretty sure the people that follow have not changed all that much. I kinda suspect bots and big scale opinion moderation. You can usually tell in the comments and weird down/upvote spikes that the concensus is artificially generated. The only discorse censored are one way. Against concensus. Up until early 2020, being agains concensus was perfectly fine on HN granted you provided a quality source. And usually made for fun though provoking reads. HN has not sunken so low on opinion sharing that it had become the absolute disaster that reddit has. Sadly its getting close though.
demygale 5y ago
Here’s my tenth man take: playing devils advocate is the laziest form of intellectual engagement and lends weight to positions that should have no weight at all.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  I don't play devil's advocate position for fun. I do it because my stance on a lot of issues deviates from the HN's consensus, and I want my point of view to be at least considered.

akg_67 5y ago

> It’s much harder to find threads with deep, nuanced conversations today than it was even a few years ago. My impression has been similar. The original discourse, logical reasoning and critical thinking is seriously lacking now in discussions. I see higher frequency of "citation needed" type of low effort comments that assume no one posting can have original thinking without it being thought by someone else and published already somewhere else online. In similar vain, responses seems to be very severe and personal when someone finds something online contrary to what someone posted. More and more HN participants seem to assume if it is published and available online, specially in research paper format or discoursed by a "popular" personality, it has more credibility irrespective of quality. On the positive side, I see lot more variety of topics discussed on HN, previously topics used to be mostly tech and startup related and very infrequently finance related. Now, I can find discussions even related to energy, material science, medical sciences etc though lacking in depth. IMO, overall HN reflects rest of the internet, availability of more and more information easily accessible has reduced the ability to critically analyze and logically reason through problems and present arguments.