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Even if you think HN and Tiktok are similar in content, your point here totally glosses over that one is a small community of people working on startups and is

Even if you think HN and Tiktok are similar in content, your point here totally glosses over that one is a small community of people working on startups and is not monetized and does not employ a variety of psychological tools to keep you engaged (it actually has anti-engagement features!) and the other is an enormous, psychologically abusive, basically state-affiliated monetization machine that also collects a shit ton of data on a much larger group of people! Like I get it, you like TikTok, but don't pretend that the quality of the content is the thing under discussion here. That is a really weird thing to do.

sillysaurusx 4y ago
Hehe. I was on HN when it was around 50 users total. That was day two, just after pg made it public. That was small, and yo8 felt like you knew everyone. That feeling lasted for a couple years. But inevitably it went away. I didn’t mean the “hehe” against you, but rather a “I wish HN was small.” It was a magical era. Believe it or not, you are precisely as hypnotized by HN as you feel I am about TikTok. They’re both wonderfully entertaining titans.
- nathan_compton 4y ago
  Again, extremely weird rhetoric. Even at its current size, Hackernews is orders of magnitude smaller and radically different economically, socially and politically. It is absolutely bizarre to compare the two in terms of content in the context of a discussion explicitly about TikTok's relationship with political and economic forces.
  - sillysaurusx 4y ago
    So what? What’s wrong with being a little weird, eh? All the best people are weirdos. If the idea that there are similarities is so unbelievable to you, then so be it. It says a lot more about you than about the comparison. Ah, there I go, letting the angry replies drag down my quality. Let’s see, what would pg say… It may feel surprising that there could be similarities. But it’s not as unlikely as you might think. It does however require an open mind, and a willingness to set aside the anger. If you’re determined to hate it, no words will change your mind.
    - nathan_compton 4y ago
      I mean weird as a polite way of saying apparently disingenuous. Your comments seem designed to deflect and divert the discussion away from its most salient points and into an arena which discussion is pointless (anyone can like any content they like, after all, no one could possibly dispute your interest in TikTok or that other people might find it interesting too). I feel relatively confident in suggesting that the issues the article points out are rather more important or at least important enough to warrant actual discussion. I'm not angry about anything, nor do I dispute your thesis that from a content point of view there may be similarities. I just raise the question of how that contributes to a genuinely useful discussion about the sociopolitical implications of the app.
      - sillysaurusx 4y ago
        Ah, I see where we’re talking past one another. Yes, you’re right. My goal was to explicitly set aside the sociopolitical implications. Why? Because there’s never any opportunity to talk about anything else on HN. One hundred percent of the time, it’s a big discussion about the political implications of TikTok. The only time it shows up here is when it’s done something newsworthy, and people are (rightly) upset or scared about it. The missing context here is that top level comments aren’t required to be “on topic” in the sense you’re saying. Quite the opposite; as dang says, HN is consistently contrarian. All I can say is that I’m never contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. That’d be lame, as well as boring. I’ve been a TikTok user for over three years now. This is simply a glimpse into that world — or at least, my poor attempt at giving one.
        haswell 4y ago
        > My goal was to explicitly set aside the sociopolitical implications. Why? … Because there’s never any opportunity to talk about anything else on HN. One hundred percent of the time, it’s a big discussion about the political implications of TikTok. I’d argue that “setting aside” the implications is a form of wishful thinking. Everything you pointed out can be pointed out without discarding the implications or implying that having a stance regarding the risks is somehow equivalent to wishing HN would be banned. TikTok is primarily an interesting topic here because of those implications and because many folks are quite willing to pretend the problem doesn’t exist as long as they get their dopamine hit. But it is completely compatible with this reality to point out that the content can be joyful to experience, while acknowledging that the context of that experience is a serious issue. And if TikTok is banned, people won’t stop creating the kinds of content found there. It’ll just move to the next big thing.
  - t-writescode 4y ago
    > Hackernews is orders of magnitude smaller and radically different economically, socially and politically. This presupposes and operates as though TikTok isn't an enormous collection of tiny niches. Many parts of TikTok are exactly like tiny subreddits where everyone or most people know each other. Equally, some places on TikTok have a whole lot of people, like the front page of Reddit. HN is somewhere larger than small reddit and smaller than big reddit.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Welcome original HN crue. What was life like back then? Were the discussions like compared to today? We've all had that feeling where we start off in a smaller group and as the place gets more popular you lose that original feeling. Not sure if HN today is comparable to Tiktok for many reasons: because this site hasn't really changed technology wise, controlled by another government superpower.
  - sillysaurusx 3y ago
    I’ve wanted to write about this for years. Someday I’ll do it justice. Let me edit this comment with one particular example. One moment… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1511104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1511104 That thread is one of the most vivid examples of the difference of then vs now. But looking back on it, the delta isn’t as large as one might think. I was going to write “Imagine Dan giving an answer like that to the community unprompted,” and then realized that he has, many times now. He’s done a tremendous job preserving the spirit that pg imbued into HN. The thread is nostalgic for other reasons too. Aaron Swartz gave a candid answer that stuck with me, and turned out to be really prescient for my life.

sillysaurusx 4y ago

Hehe. I was on HN when it was around 50 users total. That was day two, just after pg made it public. That was small, and yo8 felt like you knew everyone. That feeling lasted for a couple years. But inevitably it went away. I didn’t mean the “hehe” against you, but rather a “I wish HN was small.” It was a magical era. Believe it or not, you are precisely as hypnotized by HN as you feel I am about TikTok. They’re both wonderfully entertaining titans.

nathan_compton 4y ago
Again, extremely weird rhetoric. Even at its current size, Hackernews is orders of magnitude smaller and radically different economically, socially and politically. It is absolutely bizarre to compare the two in terms of content in the context of a discussion explicitly about TikTok's relationship with political and economic forces.
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  So what? What’s wrong with being a little weird, eh? All the best people are weirdos. If the idea that there are similarities is so unbelievable to you, then so be it. It says a lot more about you than about the comparison. Ah, there I go, letting the angry replies drag down my quality. Let’s see, what would pg say… It may feel surprising that there could be similarities. But it’s not as unlikely as you might think. It does however require an open mind, and a willingness to set aside the anger. If you’re determined to hate it, no words will change your mind.
  - nathan_compton 4y ago
    I mean weird as a polite way of saying apparently disingenuous. Your comments seem designed to deflect and divert the discussion away from its most salient points and into an arena which discussion is pointless (anyone can like any content they like, after all, no one could possibly dispute your interest in TikTok or that other people might find it interesting too). I feel relatively confident in suggesting that the issues the article points out are rather more important or at least important enough to warrant actual discussion. I'm not angry about anything, nor do I dispute your thesis that from a content point of view there may be similarities. I just raise the question of how that contributes to a genuinely useful discussion about the sociopolitical implications of the app.
    - sillysaurusx 4y ago
      Ah, I see where we’re talking past one another. Yes, you’re right. My goal was to explicitly set aside the sociopolitical implications. Why? Because there’s never any opportunity to talk about anything else on HN. One hundred percent of the time, it’s a big discussion about the political implications of TikTok. The only time it shows up here is when it’s done something newsworthy, and people are (rightly) upset or scared about it. The missing context here is that top level comments aren’t required to be “on topic” in the sense you’re saying. Quite the opposite; as dang says, HN is consistently contrarian. All I can say is that I’m never contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. That’d be lame, as well as boring. I’ve been a TikTok user for over three years now. This is simply a glimpse into that world — or at least, my poor attempt at giving one.
      - haswell 4y ago
        > My goal was to explicitly set aside the sociopolitical implications. Why? … Because there’s never any opportunity to talk about anything else on HN. One hundred percent of the time, it’s a big discussion about the political implications of TikTok. I’d argue that “setting aside” the implications is a form of wishful thinking. Everything you pointed out can be pointed out without discarding the implications or implying that having a stance regarding the risks is somehow equivalent to wishing HN would be banned. TikTok is primarily an interesting topic here because of those implications and because many folks are quite willing to pretend the problem doesn’t exist as long as they get their dopamine hit. But it is completely compatible with this reality to point out that the content can be joyful to experience, while acknowledging that the context of that experience is a serious issue. And if TikTok is banned, people won’t stop creating the kinds of content found there. It’ll just move to the next big thing.
- t-writescode 4y ago
  > Hackernews is orders of magnitude smaller and radically different economically, socially and politically. This presupposes and operates as though TikTok isn't an enormous collection of tiny niches. Many parts of TikTok are exactly like tiny subreddits where everyone or most people know each other. Equally, some places on TikTok have a whole lot of people, like the front page of Reddit. HN is somewhere larger than small reddit and smaller than big reddit.
ipaddr 4y ago
Welcome original HN crue. What was life like back then? Were the discussions like compared to today? We've all had that feeling where we start off in a smaller group and as the place gets more popular you lose that original feeling. Not sure if HN today is comparable to Tiktok for many reasons: because this site hasn't really changed technology wise, controlled by another government superpower.
- sillysaurusx 3y ago
  I’ve wanted to write about this for years. Someday I’ll do it justice. Let me edit this comment with one particular example. One moment… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1511104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1511104 That thread is one of the most vivid examples of the difference of then vs now. But looking back on it, the delta isn’t as large as one might think. I was going to write “Imagine Dan giving an answer like that to the community unprompted,” and then realized that he has, many times now. He’s done a tremendous job preserving the spirit that pg imbued into HN. The thread is nostalgic for other reasons too. Aaron Swartz gave a candid answer that stuck with me, and turned out to be really prescient for my life.