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It's not the same as it was 10 years ago. It used to be more tech, hacker, and startup focused.

by byoung2 4y ago

salad-fan 4y ago
And now it’s libertarians and Space Karen fans.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  I thought HN had a strong libertarian bent when I joined in 2010, but I think you see more left politics than you did back then although it is neither a leftist or rightist sight in my opinion now. Certainly you do see the Musk fans, but it's not a majority opinion. Every so often you see a wave of obnoxious political people, it was the "gender activists" until 2018 or so (like the woman who got arrested because she was obstructing the EMS in San Francisco and couldn't understand why), then there was an assault from the anti-woke and then anti-vax people, I am not seeing that now. You see very few blockheads (cryptocurrency advocates) on HN. Blockheads to a man think HN is a hostile place to cryptocurrency and I think they're right.
  - bediger4000 4y ago
    I think there's quite a few anti-woke/anti-SJW and anti-vaxxers on HN. Look at all the submissions of articles that suggest slight problems with COVID vaccines.
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      The anti-woke articles sometimes get a lot of upvotes on the /new page but they don't seem to last when they get the front page, I imagine they get flagged. I don't know if the upvotes are because some legitimate users get hooked or if it an example of dogpiling which they think is OK because they think their enemies dogpile all the time. Anti-vax articles were a lot more common (at the point where I'd call them "an assault") a year ago but I think people are a lot less interested in COVID-19 and its discontents than they were back then. They rarely make it to the top. I'm sure there is some filtering mechanism other than flagging, look at how the /new page was flooded by articles about the Twitterpocalypse but nothing about it makes the front page; these may be suppressed by some heuristics or active moderation, I find it hard to believe they are getting flagged quickly enough to explain their absence.
byoung2 4y ago
Case in point...in the past, I would care about downvotes on a legitimate comment like this, but now I don't really care
zach_garwood 4y ago
I've only had my account for 5 years, but I was on HN regularly for years before that. Honestly, I don't think it's changed much at all in that time.
- byoung2 4y ago
  10 or 12 years ago, you used to see tons of "Rate My Startup" or "Rate My Weekend Project" posts, and there were a lot more posts with text versus urls. This has definitely changed over time from what felt like a hacker and startup community (with a strong lean toward applying to YC) into what feels like the comments section of Techcrunch.

It's not the same as it was 10 years ago. It used to be more tech, hacker, and startup focused.

salad-fan 4y ago

And now it’s libertarians and Space Karen fans.

PaulHoule 4y ago
I thought HN had a strong libertarian bent when I joined in 2010, but I think you see more left politics than you did back then although it is neither a leftist or rightist sight in my opinion now. Certainly you do see the Musk fans, but it's not a majority opinion. Every so often you see a wave of obnoxious political people, it was the "gender activists" until 2018 or so (like the woman who got arrested because she was obstructing the EMS in San Francisco and couldn't understand why), then there was an assault from the anti-woke and then anti-vax people, I am not seeing that now. You see very few blockheads (cryptocurrency advocates) on HN. Blockheads to a man think HN is a hostile place to cryptocurrency and I think they're right.
- bediger4000 4y ago
  I think there's quite a few anti-woke/anti-SJW and anti-vaxxers on HN. Look at all the submissions of articles that suggest slight problems with COVID vaccines.
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    The anti-woke articles sometimes get a lot of upvotes on the /new page but they don't seem to last when they get the front page, I imagine they get flagged. I don't know if the upvotes are because some legitimate users get hooked or if it an example of dogpiling which they think is OK because they think their enemies dogpile all the time. Anti-vax articles were a lot more common (at the point where I'd call them "an assault") a year ago but I think people are a lot less interested in COVID-19 and its discontents than they were back then. They rarely make it to the top. I'm sure there is some filtering mechanism other than flagging, look at how the /new page was flooded by articles about the Twitterpocalypse but nothing about it makes the front page; these may be suppressed by some heuristics or active moderation, I find it hard to believe they are getting flagged quickly enough to explain their absence.

byoung2 4y ago

Case in point...in the past, I would care about downvotes on a legitimate comment like this, but now I don't really care

zach_garwood 4y ago

I've only had my account for 5 years, but I was on HN regularly for years before that. Honestly, I don't think it's changed much at all in that time.

byoung2 4y ago
10 or 12 years ago, you used to see tons of "Rate My Startup" or "Rate My Weekend Project" posts, and there were a lot more posts with text versus urls. This has definitely changed over time from what felt like a hacker and startup community (with a strong lean toward applying to YC) into what feels like the comments section of Techcrunch.