8 ms·

It's certainly possible there's a backend flag on the site. But from the comments I see on Reddit, I suspect there may be a simpler explanation: a lot of peopl

by graeme 2y ago

It's certainly possible there's a backend flag on the site. But from the comments I see on Reddit, I suspect there may be a simpler explanation: a lot of people for some reason really dislike John Gruber and view him as someone who slavishly praises Apple. I'm a big John Gruber fan, and I don't think this is true in the slightest. I think he thinks carefully, forms his own opinions, and is very willing to intensely criticize Apple as evidenced by his recent article on the State of Cupertino. But this means his pro and con opinions don't match typical opinions and this makes him polarizing. And hence some people will flag his articles reflexively or post reflexive dismissals. And Hacker News is heavily weighted to downrank polarizing articles. I've seen this same pattern happen with other topics where an article doesn't match the zeitgeist, even it the article itself is not flamebait. I think the Something Rotten in the State of Cupertino should have been at the top of Hacker News. But overall the algorithm has kept HN an interesting place. Any good moderation policy has side effects and tradeoffs. Dang would be the one to know, but it looks to me there's an innocuous explanation here. As for transparency, it's always frustrating to have it. But transparency in algo's invites gaming of those same algo's (and I don't mean by John). So I wouldn't expect the HN modteam to publish details about their algo. Edit: since I posted this, the article was flagged. Which I think may support the thesis. I will say the mod team might consider a vouch feature for articles the way one exists for users/comments. I think it ought to take a lot of vouching to counteract flags, but there are clearly articles where this is warranted. The OPSec breach this week was one of them (and it was restored).

erickhill 2y ago
> And hence some people will flag his articles reflexively or post reflexive dismissals. Prophetic. The Flagaroons have attacked.
sedev 2y ago
"But this means his pro and con opinions don't match typical opinions and this makes him polarizing. And hence some people will flag his articles reflexively or post reflexive dismissals. And Hacker News is heavily weighted to downrank polarizing articles." The downranking is particularly weird since HN's professed norms go extremely hard on something along the lines of "you should take atypical opinions seriously since they're more likely to contain new information than opinions that are conventional-wisdom-with-a-few-little-sprinkles-on-top." Sometimes the HN audience is very diligent about this norm. Reactions to Gruber's writing from the HN crown often show marked deficiencies in adherence to this norm. I'm not sure what, if anything, should be done about that by Gruber or HN's moderators, but I do believe that the problem is not located in Gruber's writing.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > The downranking is particularly weird since HN's professed norms go extremely hard on something along the lines of "you should take atypical opinions seriously since they're more likely to contain new information than opinions that are conventional-wisdom-with-a-few-little-sprinkles-on-top." HN's "professed norms" (i.e., the guidelines) do not state that, and opinions, atypical or otherwise, have zero information content beyond the information that so-and-so holds such-and-such opinion. Atypical opinions may be, on average, more likely to be accompanied by intellectually interesting arguments, but that's, at best, a loose correlation, not an iron law that where one thing occurs the other will also.
- kccqzy 2y ago
  This is not at all weird if you are a HN user with somewhat unpopular opinions. The HN guidelines say flag something if it's egregious. People end up treating flagging as a stronger version of downvotes. My most recent experience being flagged matches this up: I was presenting an argument that Chrome's manifest V3 is a good thing and it was flagged to death. I have no doubt that some users just flag this kind of opinion reflexively.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    People openly admit[1] to abusing the flagging system as their own automated mega-downvote to try to steer[2] the topics towards ones they like and away from ones they don't like. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43150182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43150182 2: Their exact word
erik 2y ago
> But this means his pro and con opinions don't match typical opinions and this makes him polarizing. And hence some people will flag his articles reflexively or post reflexive dismissals. And Hacker News is heavily weighted to downrank polarizing articles. I suspect this is it. A subset of users flag and/or downvote daringfireball on sight if it reaches the front page and the HN algorithm treats that as a strong single
rezmason 2y ago
[flagged]
- graeme 2y ago
  I doubt you intended it, but your comment actually exemplifies why a lot of his articles likely get flagged and downranked. The comment is contentious, and also asserts that it is per se impossible for someone to disagree with the EU's stance on interoperability in good faith or that there may be legit downsides. Then you deliver an extended personal attack for some reason. And one that really doesn't seem supported on the merits. Gruber co-created markdown and published a reasonably well received app, Vesper. I think you're in good faith, and I mean my comment in that spirit. I point out the features of yours to show why the articles may get flagged if they generate comments that go against the spirit of the site. I think there's a strong case your comment goes against comment guidelines 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7 I glanced at the rest of your comments. None of them are remotely close to this! You're a polite and interesting commentator. My thesis is that for whatever reason John Gruber manages to draw this style of comment out of people, and that this has increased over time as anti Apple sentiment has grown. That's not John Gruber's fault and that isn't your fault, it's just the dynamic that emerges. Comment Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - rezmason 2y ago
    Thanks for bringing my attention to the comment guidelines, I'll try to keep to them in the future. I assure you, I do write here in good faith. I'm open to listening to those who oppose the EU's position on Apple's ecosystem. I draw the line at people comparing Apple's circumstances with those portrayed in Harrison Bergeron. Apple, its developer community and its app ecosystem are unlike anyone in that story, and they certainly aren't oppressed rebels. That comparison was an editorial choice made by John Gruber in his coverage of tech news, including a link to a copy of the story he personally typeset. It rang loudly then of sentimental bias, and it's still ringing. I don't have evidence of the makeup of the Daring Fireball readership, but many of them are at least adjacent to the tech industry, and so his words have incredible reach, Hacker News notwithstanding. But what are his credentials? When he weighs the merits of a programming language, an API, a platform, or anything technical, I want him to speak from experience. Collaborating with Aaron Swartz twenty-one years ago on Markdown is respectfully not very relevant technical experience in the domains DF traditionally covers. Vesper was one ObjC app written by three people in 2013. I'm glad it was well-received, but again, what significance does Gruber's experience have? Why should the industry listen to him when he (admittedly not so often nowadays) discusses software development? If asked, I think he'd strongly agree that people in power should have considerable relevant experience. PS— the article that began this discussion is, "The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss". As you can see, I've been eager, not afraid, to discuss the merits of Daring Fireball, though not so eager as to upvote it on HN.
llm_nerd 2y ago
>I'm a big John Gruber fan Which is the problem and why I would guess that there is an automatic downranking to the domain, and why many knee-jerk flag entries from the site. Not that you specifically are a fan, but that a big enough minority of HN users would describe themselves as such and would submit and upvote entries from the site. The bulk of DF entries could best be described as opinion/my-take type content. What does John think about screen sizes (e.g. 3.5 inches is the "sweet spot"), or Mark Gurman, the EU, etc. Opinions generally do poorly here, for good reason. It is the junk food of content. It's easy and entertaining to read, especially if it agrees with our own notions so it's self-assuring, and if I think Apple are great I love to read opinions on why the EU are wrong with their DMA push, etc. I would also argue it's the laziest content to write. The whole blog-rush were millions of people spinning up blogs to give their hot take on Current Zeitgeist Thing, but then it turned out that more people want to write that than read it so it faded away. But because there were numbers of fans here, every Gruber opinion would shoot to the top of HN. It takes a tiny minority of HN users to make a story hit #1 -- right now the top four stories have barely dozens of upvotes -- so it would happen again and again and again, and people would click through and see an opinion about some thing and click back and they'd have no down arrow. Nor does the site weight "click throughs but didn't vote up". So people flag. Eventually, I presume, a domain downranking was applied. Daring Fireball isn't the only domain like this. There are various other "I'm a fan of this guy!" type personalities that would constantly top HN despite the content arguably not deserving it. Content that if it came from anywhere else would be considered blog spam. Content that could literally be just a comment on HN. There is another comment that opines that they want to see more daringfireball content on HN. I mean, they could just visit his site, or they could just hit https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=daringfireball.net https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=daringfireball.net, but what they really seem to mean is that they want everyone else to see more content from DF. It's also ridiculous how people keep trying to make this an anti-Apple thing. Apple product announcements and technology releases do extremely well on here. Those have a real impact on the lives of most users of HN, whereas DF opinion entries don't. >since I posted this, the article was flagged. Which I think may support the thesis Whines about voting/moderation on HN almost always do extremely poorly on here. In this case DF has had multiple multi-hundred upvoted submissions on here over the past couple of months, and the entitlement of actually complaining that every random post doesn't do numbers absolutely deserves to be flagged.
robenkleene 2y ago
I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I don't think it's unique to DF. As someone who values design, I've noticing for a long time that it's become harder and harder for design-related content to gain traction on HN (e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26901208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26901208). I think the explanation here is that HN has taken a hard turn towards Linux/OSS. Not to say those weren't always popular topics, but HN used to be a place for software and hardware generally, with an emphasis on making things, OSS being an obviously important component of that. Now OSS is emphasized more. To illustrate, let's do a thought experiment: Let's say someone in the industry does a detailed explanation of the VFX pipeline for a blockbuster movie, and compare that with an someone doing the same for an indie side-project using Blender. There was a time both of those would have been popular on HN, today I'd only bet on the second making it to the front page. Note I'm not making a value judgment here, just something I've observed.
alsetmusic 2y ago
> But overall the algorithm has kept HN an interesting place. Any good moderation policy has side effects and tradeoffs. I don’t think so. From his follow-up: > My thesis is that the above might once have been an accurate summary of how Hacker News functions, but hasn’t been for years, and that there now exists a cabal of moderator/admins with their thumbs on the scale, and their personal predilections are the primary steering force of what’s permitted to surface and what gets ghosted. This moderation cabal operates more or less in secret. Their actions, and thus even their usernames, are invisible — lest the HN community discover that it’s steering things about as much as Maggie Simpson is. Sounds right to me.
- rurp 2y ago
  I think a simpler theory for this or any site not ranking high is that a small group of users consistently flag the posts, and flags carry a lot of weight. We've seen this more blatantly with Elon articles. Almost any submission that paints him in a negative light gets flagged quickly and rarely makes the front page.
  - vessenes 2y ago
    Interesting take. I was going to say any comment that doesn’t pillory him gets downvoted immediately.
- js2 2y ago
  This is paranoid conspiracy-theory stuff. Or it's bait. It's also not falsifiable. Dang can disclaim it but Gruber's next step would just be to write "of course dang would say that." Frankly, I find this submission and Gruber's followup insufferable and it makes me want to read him less. I say that as a regular reader of his blog who's purchased several of his t-shirts over the years. But really, these posts alone make me no longer a fan.
  - tiltowait 2y ago
    The treatment of Daring Fireball articles does feel inorganic to me, but if it is, no one who's talking can say whether it's because of mod abuse or a group of users who really hate the site and want to punish it. And ... while I can understand frustration and disappointment on his end, the long post yesterday, let alone a second post, and apparently now discussion of it on a podcast where he was a guest, is overboard. He often comes across as a touch full of himself, and it's on blatant display here. Don't blame anyone for being turned off.
toasterlovin 2y ago
I agree with this explanation. There is a sizable contingent of commenters on here who are just extremely negative on everything Apple. I read most of the big Apple threads and they're just overwhelmingly negative toward the company and, honestly, not very thoughtful. I think this has been a developing trend since I've been on HN. Since Gruber is coming at things from a pro-Apple, but nuanced place, I'm not at all surprised that his articles don't do well.
- apple4ever 2y ago
  That's possible, but the problem is his take on Apple's customer unfriendly policies is not nuanced at all.
  - toasterlovin 2y ago
    That’s exactly a topic that I think HN is collectively unhinged about, so I don’t even bother commenting. But I spend a lot of money with Apple and I like everything about their ecosystem, especially the locked down, Disneyland-esque sterile experience on my phone.
    - BobaFloutist 2y ago
      I think most people would probably consider that acceptable as a specialty product, but chafe against it being half of a duopoly. And I think it's also grown less and less acceptable to people as Google (and Microsoft, for the other duopoly Apple contributes to) have also become increasingly anti-consumer. I don't resent the existence of Disneyland, but I probably would if 90% of all outdoor parks I could visit were either Disneyland or Facebookland.
apple4ever 2y ago
> I suspect there may be a simpler explanation: a lot of people for some reason really dislike John Gruber and view him as someone who slavishly praises Apple. I think you are right. Defending Apple's customer unfriendly policies that forced the EU's hand has turned a lot of people off. I've been a long time reader of Gruber's, pretty much since he starts. And he's always favored Apple in a way that was reasonable. But the defense of the things Apple does that harms customers is not reasonable, and I think that turned off a lot of his former fans.
JohnBooty 2y ago
I suspect there may be a simpler explanation: a lot of people for some reason really dislike John Gruber and view him as someone who slavishly praises Apple. This is most definitely true but he, and Apple, have always been very polarizing. I don't think either one has become more polarizing? And if so, certainly not in some extremely sudden way that would explain DF's popularity on HN falling off of a cliff. HN's crowd has changed since its inception, but again, not in some really abrupt way.
- inatreecrown2 2y ago
  He did start to write a lot about US politics, which for me is enough to stop reading his blog.
  - JohnBooty 2y ago
    (FWIW: While I do generally enjoy DF, my interest here is primarily in understanding HN. I read HN probably 5-10 times a day, whereas I read DF perhaps 5-10 times per month. The near-absence of DF on HN doesn't affect me at all.) He did start to write a lot about US politics, which for me is enough to stop reading his blog. That makes complete sense to me. It would take only a very few "major turn-off" articles to make me remove a blog from my feed and/or stop visiting it directly. Even a 1% incidence of such posts could cause that blog to lose 100% of my traffic. However, that doesn't adequately explain DF articles' swift removal from HN's front page. On HN's page front page I'd expect article links to sink or swim based entirely on their own individual merit.

by graeme 2y ago

erickhill 2y ago

> And hence some people will flag his articles reflexively or post reflexive dismissals. Prophetic. The Flagaroons have attacked.

sedev 2y ago

"But this means his pro and con opinions don't match typical opinions and this makes him polarizing. And hence some people will flag his articles reflexively or post reflexive dismissals. And Hacker News is heavily weighted to downrank polarizing articles." The downranking is particularly weird since HN's professed norms go extremely hard on something along the lines of "you should take atypical opinions seriously since they're more likely to contain new information than opinions that are conventional-wisdom-with-a-few-little-sprinkles-on-top." Sometimes the HN audience is very diligent about this norm. Reactions to Gruber's writing from the HN crown often show marked deficiencies in adherence to this norm. I'm not sure what, if anything, should be done about that by Gruber or HN's moderators, but I do believe that the problem is not located in Gruber's writing.

dragonwriter 2y ago
> The downranking is particularly weird since HN's professed norms go extremely hard on something along the lines of "you should take atypical opinions seriously since they're more likely to contain new information than opinions that are conventional-wisdom-with-a-few-little-sprinkles-on-top." HN's "professed norms" (i.e., the guidelines) do not state that, and opinions, atypical or otherwise, have zero information content beyond the information that so-and-so holds such-and-such opinion. Atypical opinions may be, on average, more likely to be accompanied by intellectually interesting arguments, but that's, at best, a loose correlation, not an iron law that where one thing occurs the other will also.
kccqzy 2y ago
This is not at all weird if you are a HN user with somewhat unpopular opinions. The HN guidelines say flag something if it's egregious. People end up treating flagging as a stronger version of downvotes. My most recent experience being flagged matches this up: I was presenting an argument that Chrome's manifest V3 is a good thing and it was flagged to death. I have no doubt that some users just flag this kind of opinion reflexively.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  People openly admit[1] to abusing the flagging system as their own automated mega-downvote to try to steer[2] the topics towards ones they like and away from ones they don't like. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43150182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43150182 2: Their exact word

erik 2y ago

> But this means his pro and con opinions don't match typical opinions and this makes him polarizing. And hence some people will flag his articles reflexively or post reflexive dismissals. And Hacker News is heavily weighted to downrank polarizing articles. I suspect this is it. A subset of users flag and/or downvote daringfireball on sight if it reaches the front page and the HN algorithm treats that as a strong single

rezmason 2y ago

[flagged]

graeme 2y ago
I doubt you intended it, but your comment actually exemplifies why a lot of his articles likely get flagged and downranked. The comment is contentious, and also asserts that it is per se impossible for someone to disagree with the EU's stance on interoperability in good faith or that there may be legit downsides. Then you deliver an extended personal attack for some reason. And one that really doesn't seem supported on the merits. Gruber co-created markdown and published a reasonably well received app, Vesper. I think you're in good faith, and I mean my comment in that spirit. I point out the features of yours to show why the articles may get flagged if they generate comments that go against the spirit of the site. I think there's a strong case your comment goes against comment guidelines 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7 I glanced at the rest of your comments. None of them are remotely close to this! You're a polite and interesting commentator. My thesis is that for whatever reason John Gruber manages to draw this style of comment out of people, and that this has increased over time as anti Apple sentiment has grown. That's not John Gruber's fault and that isn't your fault, it's just the dynamic that emerges. Comment Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- rezmason 2y ago
  Thanks for bringing my attention to the comment guidelines, I'll try to keep to them in the future. I assure you, I do write here in good faith. I'm open to listening to those who oppose the EU's position on Apple's ecosystem. I draw the line at people comparing Apple's circumstances with those portrayed in Harrison Bergeron. Apple, its developer community and its app ecosystem are unlike anyone in that story, and they certainly aren't oppressed rebels. That comparison was an editorial choice made by John Gruber in his coverage of tech news, including a link to a copy of the story he personally typeset. It rang loudly then of sentimental bias, and it's still ringing. I don't have evidence of the makeup of the Daring Fireball readership, but many of them are at least adjacent to the tech industry, and so his words have incredible reach, Hacker News notwithstanding. But what are his credentials? When he weighs the merits of a programming language, an API, a platform, or anything technical, I want him to speak from experience. Collaborating with Aaron Swartz twenty-one years ago on Markdown is respectfully not very relevant technical experience in the domains DF traditionally covers. Vesper was one ObjC app written by three people in 2013. I'm glad it was well-received, but again, what significance does Gruber's experience have? Why should the industry listen to him when he (admittedly not so often nowadays) discusses software development? If asked, I think he'd strongly agree that people in power should have considerable relevant experience. PS— the article that began this discussion is, "The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss". As you can see, I've been eager, not afraid, to discuss the merits of Daring Fireball, though not so eager as to upvote it on HN.

llm_nerd 2y ago

>I'm a big John Gruber fan Which is the problem and why I would guess that there is an automatic downranking to the domain, and why many knee-jerk flag entries from the site. Not that you specifically are a fan, but that a big enough minority of HN users would describe themselves as such and would submit and upvote entries from the site. The bulk of DF entries could best be described as opinion/my-take type content. What does John think about screen sizes (e.g. 3.5 inches is the "sweet spot"), or Mark Gurman, the EU, etc. Opinions generally do poorly here, for good reason. It is the junk food of content. It's easy and entertaining to read, especially if it agrees with our own notions so it's self-assuring, and if I think Apple are great I love to read opinions on why the EU are wrong with their DMA push, etc. I would also argue it's the laziest content to write. The whole blog-rush were millions of people spinning up blogs to give their hot take on Current Zeitgeist Thing, but then it turned out that more people want to write that than read it so it faded away. But because there were numbers of fans here, every Gruber opinion would shoot to the top of HN. It takes a tiny minority of HN users to make a story hit #1 -- right now the top four stories have barely dozens of upvotes -- so it would happen again and again and again, and people would click through and see an opinion about some thing and click back and they'd have no down arrow. Nor does the site weight "click throughs but didn't vote up". So people flag. Eventually, I presume, a domain downranking was applied. Daring Fireball isn't the only domain like this. There are various other "I'm a fan of this guy!" type personalities that would constantly top HN despite the content arguably not deserving it. Content that if it came from anywhere else would be considered blog spam. Content that could literally be just a comment on HN. There is another comment that opines that they want to see more daringfireball content on HN. I mean, they could just visit his site, or they could just hit https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=daringfireball.net https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=daringfireball.net, but what they really seem to mean is that they want everyone else to see more content from DF. It's also ridiculous how people keep trying to make this an anti-Apple thing. Apple product announcements and technology releases do extremely well on here. Those have a real impact on the lives of most users of HN, whereas DF opinion entries don't. >since I posted this, the article was flagged. Which I think may support the thesis Whines about voting/moderation on HN almost always do extremely poorly on here. In this case DF has had multiple multi-hundred upvoted submissions on here over the past couple of months, and the entitlement of actually complaining that every random post doesn't do numbers absolutely deserves to be flagged.

robenkleene 2y ago

I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I don't think it's unique to DF. As someone who values design, I've noticing for a long time that it's become harder and harder for design-related content to gain traction on HN (e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26901208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26901208). I think the explanation here is that HN has taken a hard turn towards Linux/OSS. Not to say those weren't always popular topics, but HN used to be a place for software and hardware generally, with an emphasis on making things, OSS being an obviously important component of that. Now OSS is emphasized more. To illustrate, let's do a thought experiment: Let's say someone in the industry does a detailed explanation of the VFX pipeline for a blockbuster movie, and compare that with an someone doing the same for an indie side-project using Blender. There was a time both of those would have been popular on HN, today I'd only bet on the second making it to the front page. Note I'm not making a value judgment here, just something I've observed.

alsetmusic 2y ago

> But overall the algorithm has kept HN an interesting place. Any good moderation policy has side effects and tradeoffs. I don’t think so. From his follow-up: > My thesis is that the above might once have been an accurate summary of how Hacker News functions, but hasn’t been for years, and that there now exists a cabal of moderator/admins with their thumbs on the scale, and their personal predilections are the primary steering force of what’s permitted to surface and what gets ghosted. This moderation cabal operates more or less in secret. Their actions, and thus even their usernames, are invisible — lest the HN community discover that it’s steering things about as much as Maggie Simpson is. Sounds right to me.

rurp 2y ago
I think a simpler theory for this or any site not ranking high is that a small group of users consistently flag the posts, and flags carry a lot of weight. We've seen this more blatantly with Elon articles. Almost any submission that paints him in a negative light gets flagged quickly and rarely makes the front page.
- vessenes 2y ago
  Interesting take. I was going to say any comment that doesn’t pillory him gets downvoted immediately.
js2 2y ago
This is paranoid conspiracy-theory stuff. Or it's bait. It's also not falsifiable. Dang can disclaim it but Gruber's next step would just be to write "of course dang would say that." Frankly, I find this submission and Gruber's followup insufferable and it makes me want to read him less. I say that as a regular reader of his blog who's purchased several of his t-shirts over the years. But really, these posts alone make me no longer a fan.
- tiltowait 2y ago
  The treatment of Daring Fireball articles does feel inorganic to me, but if it is, no one who's talking can say whether it's because of mod abuse or a group of users who really hate the site and want to punish it. And ... while I can understand frustration and disappointment on his end, the long post yesterday, let alone a second post, and apparently now discussion of it on a podcast where he was a guest, is overboard. He often comes across as a touch full of himself, and it's on blatant display here. Don't blame anyone for being turned off.

toasterlovin 2y ago

I agree with this explanation. There is a sizable contingent of commenters on here who are just extremely negative on everything Apple. I read most of the big Apple threads and they're just overwhelmingly negative toward the company and, honestly, not very thoughtful. I think this has been a developing trend since I've been on HN. Since Gruber is coming at things from a pro-Apple, but nuanced place, I'm not at all surprised that his articles don't do well.

apple4ever 2y ago
That's possible, but the problem is his take on Apple's customer unfriendly policies is not nuanced at all.
- toasterlovin 2y ago
  That’s exactly a topic that I think HN is collectively unhinged about, so I don’t even bother commenting. But I spend a lot of money with Apple and I like everything about their ecosystem, especially the locked down, Disneyland-esque sterile experience on my phone.
  - BobaFloutist 2y ago
    I think most people would probably consider that acceptable as a specialty product, but chafe against it being half of a duopoly. And I think it's also grown less and less acceptable to people as Google (and Microsoft, for the other duopoly Apple contributes to) have also become increasingly anti-consumer. I don't resent the existence of Disneyland, but I probably would if 90% of all outdoor parks I could visit were either Disneyland or Facebookland.

apple4ever 2y ago

> I suspect there may be a simpler explanation: a lot of people for some reason really dislike John Gruber and view him as someone who slavishly praises Apple. I think you are right. Defending Apple's customer unfriendly policies that forced the EU's hand has turned a lot of people off. I've been a long time reader of Gruber's, pretty much since he starts. And he's always favored Apple in a way that was reasonable. But the defense of the things Apple does that harms customers is not reasonable, and I think that turned off a lot of his former fans.

JohnBooty 2y ago

I suspect there may be a simpler explanation: a lot of people for some reason really dislike John Gruber and view him as someone who slavishly praises Apple. This is most definitely true but he, and Apple, have always been very polarizing. I don't think either one has become more polarizing? And if so, certainly not in some extremely sudden way that would explain DF's popularity on HN falling off of a cliff. HN's crowd has changed since its inception, but again, not in some really abrupt way.

inatreecrown2 2y ago
He did start to write a lot about US politics, which for me is enough to stop reading his blog.
- JohnBooty 2y ago
  (FWIW: While I do generally enjoy DF, my interest here is primarily in understanding HN. I read HN probably 5-10 times a day, whereas I read DF perhaps 5-10 times per month. The near-absence of DF on HN doesn't affect me at all.) He did start to write a lot about US politics, which for me is enough to stop reading his blog. That makes complete sense to me. It would take only a very few "major turn-off" articles to make me remove a blog from my feed and/or stop visiting it directly. Even a 1% incidence of such posts could cause that blog to lose 100% of my traffic. However, that doesn't adequately explain DF articles' swift removal from HN's front page. On HN's page front page I'd expect article links to sink or swim based entirely on their own individual merit.