5 ms·

IMO as a long time HN reader and poster, the rise in strident un-nuanced posts affirming moral or political opinions is really bringing down the quality of the

IMO as a long time HN reader and poster, the rise in strident un-nuanced posts affirming moral or political opinions is really bringing down the quality of the site. I still defend HN as a good site with a variety of expert technical opinions, but these affirmation posts just turns HN into the worst of Twitter.

desindol 4y ago
It was always in the dna of hackernews…
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  Sure. I'm just saying it's getting worse. Or at least, that's my subjective observation.
  - TimTheTinker 4y ago
    I really depends. There's a long-running, recurrent myth that HN is becoming like reddit. I think the real cause of what you're observing is that users on HN go through cycles of enculturation, which can include being modded by dang (or challenged/flagged by other users) for crossing the line. I used to feel frustrated that HN is very limited in its scope of what's allowed -- "curiosity only" which often excludes issues that really matter to me. It can take a while for users to really get that here. But on the other hand, it has allowed an extremely unique anonymous online community to thrive in its own way, and keep us coming back out of curiosity and a desire to learn.
    - MegaButts 4y ago
      > There's a long-running, recurrent myth that HN is becoming like reddit. Have you considered the possibility that the reason the myth is pervasive is because it's true, and over time HN is becoming more and more like reddit? It seems to me if the users continually complain about the same problem, maybe there's something there. "No, it's the users that are wrong!" requires a lot more than handwaving if you want me to take you seriously. As someone who's been using HN for years, I absolutely believe it becomes more like reddit over time.
      - striking 4y ago
        I've seen some pockets here or there of grating, boring "jokes" or obvious attempts at farming karma, but I don't think that really makes the site any more like Reddit. I think folks are using "becoming Reddit" as a shorthand for seeing comments they don't like or believe are low-effort, and it does everyone a disservice when things are framed that way. Let's call low-effort comments what they are and make the conversations a little simpler.
        MegaButts 4y ago
        The increase in astroturfing is what I see as the biggest change to HN over time that makes it more like reddit. As HN becomes larger it becomes a larger target for corporate interests. You don't see too many companies successfully promoting crappy products on HN, but I notice lots of articles that are negative towards corporations get flagged and/or swarmed with positive comments. I think this is just something that happens as you grow larger. And as you grow larger you have more people with a wider spectrum of opinions, and while you'd hope the discussions would be civil the mods seem quicker to shutdown topics they believe will lead to flame wars. That said, it's easy to be critical and hard to be constructive. I still come to HN regularly so there's obviously something to it. I'm not pretending to have the magic bullet to these problems (some of which I believe are fundamental/intractable). EDIT: I find it ironic this post has fallen off the first page of HN before I finished this comment, despite having many comments and being something I find interesting.
        striking 4y ago
        If you suspect astroturfing, the best course of action is to email the mods. They're very open about this particular topic. That being said, this is a forum for VC and startup talk among other things, so it would be pretty surprising if there wasn't some astroturfing at play. Self-promotion comes with the territory. The mods are doing their best but to some extent it's in the game. Finally, there's no irony about this no longer being on the front page. When I first clicked into this thread, I was surprised it was FP still, because it had twice as many comments as votes and that usually trips the flamewar detector. I think folks are generally unaware of the systems that make HN tick, and that can make the experience pretty confusing.
    - winternett 4y ago
      Reddit is forcing users off the platform by a lack of innovation, promotion of inauthentic and mediocre posts, and over-moderation... and now they're gravitating towards other places online (in my opinion) after teaching them about how brigading and suggestive comment spam can generate money, but quickly kill a massive site. I think we're reaching the next phase of the Internet, where big platform influence wanes, and where hopefully small communities figure out how to better govern themselves against nefarious actors. We should lean on many of the older (proven) community standards again in online communities, and bring back displaying BOTH upvote and downvote data like we used to see... We also need to emphasize more choice and less algorithmic control over what trends on sites (from a "customer satisfaction" perspective). Letting real human readers decide what's relevant and best... The only way to effectively manage a horrible inauthentic user plague/threat is by crowd sourcing real and authentic human beings that have a solid stake in maintaining positive order. Also, avoid embedding ads in everything as well as selling promotional services... It really does morally corrupt sites and apps.
metadat 4y ago
Any specific examples you can share? I'd like to know to gain awareness of whether or not I'm committing or participating in such gaffes so I can modify my behavior in the future, if needed. I don't want to be "that person"! When I encounter egregiously toxic posts, I email our lone mod warrior, Dang (hn@ycombinator.com) to ensure he has the opportunity to review and take whatever action is appropriate. The daily post volume on HN is so high, it's challenging (to the point of being impossible) to moderate it all alone. Plus it's a generally thankless, horrifyingly soul crushing job. So I try to help out where I can, when I'm not the one causing the trouble :p :cry:
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  IMO the linked Substack does a great job of demonstrating it. Take a look at the thread in Big Tech regulation that came up earlier today, that's one too.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  For some reason, the Canadian truckers' honking protests were the main topic of discussion here for weeks, with commenters inevitably taking stances for one side or the other. It was ridiculous and I'm pretty sure HN lost plenty of potential users to sites like Lobsters, which just kept posting and commenting about cool tech stuff.
  - dang 4y ago
    That doesn't match my memory, so I'd be curious which weeks you're talking about. You can find the main topics of discussion via links like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2022-07-19 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2022-07-19. (They're ordered by time spent on the front page.)
  - moistly 4y ago
    Lost plenty of potential and actual users, and also gained a ton of protest-supporting users because that’s how they can best inflate the appearance of support for their cause (and also because HN attracted the attention of the hostile foreign agents who are instigating these social disruption movements in the West.) IMO HN would do well to ban political and social-movement posts entirely.
akozak 4y ago
I think I'd rather see short, strident statements of opinion than multi-paragraphed 'reasoned' arguments that are essentially the same thing but with different aesthetics. Much quicker to process!
- Semiapies 4y ago
  I've seen a lot of walls of text lately by people that look copied-and-pasted from their blogs/forum rants/whatever.
- armchairhacker 4y ago
  Issues are - When the statement is obvious, you mine as well not say it at all. On a lot of Reddit threads every upvoted comment is basically some variation of “This”, “Yep”, “I agree” (sometimes literally those). It’s absurd, there’s no discussion and the entire point of the comments section is wasted. (Honestly, a lot of Reddit is just the same posts and arguments over and over) - When the opinion actually deserves nuance. When people throw around phrases like “the US is a third-world country”, “Google is an awful company only focused on greed”, “never trust your employer”. No, these statements aren’t 100% true, Google is a greedy company but it really isn’t just a money-making machine, it provides a search engine and mail and office software and video platform that you probably use. Additionally, when the statements are political and derogatory (“all X group is bad”), you start to criticize people who don’t deserve the criticism.
  - akozak 4y ago
    That's fair. It's definitely fashionable to be hyperbolic. But it might also be wrong to interpret those statements literally or at face-value. See Emotivism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotivism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotivism That is to say, a lot of "nuanced" arguments are just as morally emotive as short punchy ones. The latter might be less persuasive, but I'm not sure many people are changing their minds on moral or ethical debates these days anyway.
    - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
themodelplumber 4y ago
Avoiding the political is generally easy until the minefield vocabulary comes up, even if by accident. Moral opinions are tricky because they feed directly into and out of concepts like integrity, fidelity and quality, which are favorites on HN and can be discussed technically as well as morally. But we don't really learn much about that razor edge in general education so it's not as easily avoided.

desindol 4y ago

It was always in the dna of hackernews…

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
Sure. I'm just saying it's getting worse. Or at least, that's my subjective observation.
- TimTheTinker 4y ago
  I really depends. There's a long-running, recurrent myth that HN is becoming like reddit. I think the real cause of what you're observing is that users on HN go through cycles of enculturation, which can include being modded by dang (or challenged/flagged by other users) for crossing the line. I used to feel frustrated that HN is very limited in its scope of what's allowed -- "curiosity only" which often excludes issues that really matter to me. It can take a while for users to really get that here. But on the other hand, it has allowed an extremely unique anonymous online community to thrive in its own way, and keep us coming back out of curiosity and a desire to learn.
  - MegaButts 4y ago
    > There's a long-running, recurrent myth that HN is becoming like reddit. Have you considered the possibility that the reason the myth is pervasive is because it's true, and over time HN is becoming more and more like reddit? It seems to me if the users continually complain about the same problem, maybe there's something there. "No, it's the users that are wrong!" requires a lot more than handwaving if you want me to take you seriously. As someone who's been using HN for years, I absolutely believe it becomes more like reddit over time.
    - striking 4y ago
      I've seen some pockets here or there of grating, boring "jokes" or obvious attempts at farming karma, but I don't think that really makes the site any more like Reddit. I think folks are using "becoming Reddit" as a shorthand for seeing comments they don't like or believe are low-effort, and it does everyone a disservice when things are framed that way. Let's call low-effort comments what they are and make the conversations a little simpler.
      - MegaButts 4y ago
        The increase in astroturfing is what I see as the biggest change to HN over time that makes it more like reddit. As HN becomes larger it becomes a larger target for corporate interests. You don't see too many companies successfully promoting crappy products on HN, but I notice lots of articles that are negative towards corporations get flagged and/or swarmed with positive comments. I think this is just something that happens as you grow larger. And as you grow larger you have more people with a wider spectrum of opinions, and while you'd hope the discussions would be civil the mods seem quicker to shutdown topics they believe will lead to flame wars. That said, it's easy to be critical and hard to be constructive. I still come to HN regularly so there's obviously something to it. I'm not pretending to have the magic bullet to these problems (some of which I believe are fundamental/intractable). EDIT: I find it ironic this post has fallen off the first page of HN before I finished this comment, despite having many comments and being something I find interesting.
        striking 4y ago
        If you suspect astroturfing, the best course of action is to email the mods. They're very open about this particular topic. That being said, this is a forum for VC and startup talk among other things, so it would be pretty surprising if there wasn't some astroturfing at play. Self-promotion comes with the territory. The mods are doing their best but to some extent it's in the game. Finally, there's no irony about this no longer being on the front page. When I first clicked into this thread, I was surprised it was FP still, because it had twice as many comments as votes and that usually trips the flamewar detector. I think folks are generally unaware of the systems that make HN tick, and that can make the experience pretty confusing.
  - winternett 4y ago
    Reddit is forcing users off the platform by a lack of innovation, promotion of inauthentic and mediocre posts, and over-moderation... and now they're gravitating towards other places online (in my opinion) after teaching them about how brigading and suggestive comment spam can generate money, but quickly kill a massive site. I think we're reaching the next phase of the Internet, where big platform influence wanes, and where hopefully small communities figure out how to better govern themselves against nefarious actors. We should lean on many of the older (proven) community standards again in online communities, and bring back displaying BOTH upvote and downvote data like we used to see... We also need to emphasize more choice and less algorithmic control over what trends on sites (from a "customer satisfaction" perspective). Letting real human readers decide what's relevant and best... The only way to effectively manage a horrible inauthentic user plague/threat is by crowd sourcing real and authentic human beings that have a solid stake in maintaining positive order. Also, avoid embedding ads in everything as well as selling promotional services... It really does morally corrupt sites and apps.

metadat 4y ago

Any specific examples you can share? I'd like to know to gain awareness of whether or not I'm committing or participating in such gaffes so I can modify my behavior in the future, if needed. I don't want to be "that person"! When I encounter egregiously toxic posts, I email our lone mod warrior, Dang (hn@ycombinator.com) to ensure he has the opportunity to review and take whatever action is appropriate. The daily post volume on HN is so high, it's challenging (to the point of being impossible) to moderate it all alone. Plus it's a generally thankless, horrifyingly soul crushing job. So I try to help out where I can, when I'm not the one causing the trouble :p :cry:

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
IMO the linked Substack does a great job of demonstrating it. Take a look at the thread in Big Tech regulation that came up earlier today, that's one too.
zozbot234 4y ago
For some reason, the Canadian truckers' honking protests were the main topic of discussion here for weeks, with commenters inevitably taking stances for one side or the other. It was ridiculous and I'm pretty sure HN lost plenty of potential users to sites like Lobsters, which just kept posting and commenting about cool tech stuff.
- dang 4y ago
  That doesn't match my memory, so I'd be curious which weeks you're talking about. You can find the main topics of discussion via links like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2022-07-19 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2022-07-19. (They're ordered by time spent on the front page.)
- moistly 4y ago
  Lost plenty of potential and actual users, and also gained a ton of protest-supporting users because that’s how they can best inflate the appearance of support for their cause (and also because HN attracted the attention of the hostile foreign agents who are instigating these social disruption movements in the West.) IMO HN would do well to ban political and social-movement posts entirely.

akozak 4y ago

I think I'd rather see short, strident statements of opinion than multi-paragraphed 'reasoned' arguments that are essentially the same thing but with different aesthetics. Much quicker to process!

Semiapies 4y ago
I've seen a lot of walls of text lately by people that look copied-and-pasted from their blogs/forum rants/whatever.
armchairhacker 4y ago
Issues are - When the statement is obvious, you mine as well not say it at all. On a lot of Reddit threads every upvoted comment is basically some variation of “This”, “Yep”, “I agree” (sometimes literally those). It’s absurd, there’s no discussion and the entire point of the comments section is wasted. (Honestly, a lot of Reddit is just the same posts and arguments over and over) - When the opinion actually deserves nuance. When people throw around phrases like “the US is a third-world country”, “Google is an awful company only focused on greed”, “never trust your employer”. No, these statements aren’t 100% true, Google is a greedy company but it really isn’t just a money-making machine, it provides a search engine and mail and office software and video platform that you probably use. Additionally, when the statements are political and derogatory (“all X group is bad”), you start to criticize people who don’t deserve the criticism.
- akozak 4y ago
  That's fair. It's definitely fashionable to be hyperbolic. But it might also be wrong to interpret those statements literally or at face-value. See Emotivism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotivism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotivism That is to say, a lot of "nuanced" arguments are just as morally emotive as short punchy ones. The latter might be less persuasive, but I'm not sure many people are changing their minds on moral or ethical debates these days anyway.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago

themodelplumber 4y ago

Avoiding the political is generally easy until the minefield vocabulary comes up, even if by accident. Moral opinions are tricky because they feed directly into and out of concepts like integrity, fidelity and quality, which are favorites on HN and can be discussed technically as well as morally. But we don't really learn much about that razor edge in general education so it's not as easily avoided.