6 ms·

This is entirely why I can't bring myself to use it. The groupthink and virtue signaling is intense, when it's not just extremely low effort crud that rises to

This is entirely why I can't bring myself to use it. The groupthink and virtue signaling is intense, when it's not just extremely low effort crud that rises to the top. And yes, before anyone says, I know, "curate." No, thank you.

dingnuts 1y ago
Friend, this website is EXACTLY the same
- rafterydj 1y ago
  I understand that the core similarities are there, but I disagree. The comparisons have been around since I started browsing HN years ago. The moderation on this site, for one, emphasizes constructive conversation and discussion in a way that most subreddits can only dream of. It also helps that the target audience has been filtered with that moderation, so over time this site (on average) skews more technical and informed.
  - ffsm8 1y ago
    Frankly, no. As an obvious example that can be stated nowadays: musk has always been an over-promising liar. Eg just look at the 2012+ videos of thunderf00t. Yet people were literally banned here just for pointing out that he hasn't actually delivered on anything in the capacity he promised until he did the salute. It's pointless to list other examples, as this page is- as dingnuts pointed out - exactly the same and most people aren't actually willing to change their opinion based on arguments. They're set in their opinions and think everyone else is dumb.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
      I don’t see how that example refutes their point. It can be true both that there have been disagreeable bans and that the bans, in general, tend to result in higher quality discussions. The disagreeable bans seem to be outliers. > They're set in their opinions and think everyone else is dumb. Well, anyway, I read and post comments here because commenters here think critically about discussion topics. It’s not a perfect community with perfect moderation but the discussions are of a quality that’s hard to find elsewhere, let alone reddit.
    - chucksmash 1y ago
      > Yet people were literally banned here just for pointing out that he hasn't actually delivered on anything in the capacity he promised until he did the salute. I'd be shocked if they (you?) were banned just for critiquing Musk. So please link the post. I'm prepared to be shocked. I'm also pretty sure that I could make a throwaway account that only posted critiques of Musk (or about any single subject for that matter) and manage to keep it alive by making the critiques timely, on-topic and thoughtful or get it banned by being repetitive and unconstructive. So would you say I was banned for talking about <topic>? Or would you say I was banned for my behavior while talking about <topic>?
      - computerthings 1y ago
        [dead]
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - janalsncm 1y ago
      Aside from the fact that I highly doubt anyone was banned as you describe, EM’s stories have gotten more and more grandiose. So it’s not the same. Today he’s pitching moonshot projects as core to Tesla. 10 years ago he was saying self-driving was easy, but he was also selling by far the best electric vehicle on the market. So lying about self driving and Tesla semis mattered less. Fwiw I’ve been subbed to tf00t since his 50 part creationist videos in early 2010s.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
  - Freedom2 1y ago
    This sites commenters attempt to apply technical solutions to social problems, then pats itself on the back despite their comments being entirely inappropriate to the problem space. There's also no actual constructive discussion when it comes to future looking tech. The Cybertruck, Vision Pro, LLMs are some of the most recent items that were absolutely inaccurately called by the most popular comments. And their reasoning for their prediction had no actual substance in their comments.
    - yieldcrv 1y ago
      And the crypto asset discussions are very nontechnical here, veering into elementary and inaccurate philosophical discussions, despite this being a great forum to talk about technical aspects. every network has pull requests and governance proposals worth discussing, and the deepest discussion here is resurrected from 2012 about the entire concept not having a licit use case that the poster could imagine
  - Maxatar 1y ago
    HackerNews isn't not exactly like reddit, sure, but it's not much better. People are much better behaved, but still spread a great deal of misinformation. One way to gauge this property of a community is whether people who are known experts in a respective field participate in it, and unfortunately there are very few of them on HackerNews (this was not always the case). I've had some opportunities to meet with people who are experts, usually at conferences/industry events, and while many of them tend to be active on Twitter... they all say the same things about this site, namely that it's simply full of bad information and the amount of effort needed to dispel that information is significantly higher than the amount of effort needed to spread it. Next time someone posts an article about a topic you are intimately familiar with, like top 1% subject matter expert in... review the comment section for it and you'll find just heaps of misconceptions, superficial knowledge, and my favorite are the contrarians who take these very strong opinions on a subject they have some passing knowledge about but talk about their contrarian opinion with such a high degree of confidence. One issue is you may not actually be a subject matter expert on a topic that comes up a lot on HackerNews, so you won't recognize that this happens... but while people here are a lot more polite and the moderation policies do encourage good behavior... moderation policies don't do a lot to stop the spread of bad information from poorly informed people.
    - SamPatt 1y ago
      One of the things I appreciate most about HN is the fact that experts are often found in the comments. Perhaps we are defining experts differently?
      - bb88 1y ago
        There was a lot of pseudo science being published and voted up in the comments with Ivermectin/HCQ/etc and Covid, when those people weren't experts and before the Ivermectin paper got serious scrutiny. The other aspect is that people on here think they're that if they are an expert in one thing, they instantly become an expert in another thing.
        Jensson 1y ago
  - tuwtuwtuwtuw 1y ago
    Do you have any sources to back up those claims?
- ddoolin 1y ago
  It happens in degrees, and the degree here is much lower.
  - turtlesdown11 1y ago
    its actually the reverse, dunning kruger is off the charts on hacker news
    - ddoolin 1y ago
      I don't think there's a lot of groupthink or virtue signaling here, and those are the things that irritate me the most. If people here overestimate their knowledge or abilities, that's okay because I don't treat things people say as gospel/fact/truth unless I have clear and compelling reasons to do so. This is the internet after all. Personally I also think the submissions that make it to the front page(s) are much better than any subreddit.
      - pixxel 1y ago
        [dead]
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    I disagree. Reddit users are out to impress nobody but themselves, but the other day I saw someone submit a "Show HN" with AI-generated testimonials. HN has an active grifter culture reinforced by the VC funding cycles. Reddit can only dream about lying as well as HN does.
    - rafaelmn 1y ago
      That's a tangential problem. HN tends to push up grifter hype slop, and there are a lot of those people around cause VC, but you can still see comments pushing back. Reading reddit reminds me of highschool forum arguments I've had 20 years ago, but lower quality because of population selection. It's just too mainstream at this point and shows you what the middle of the bell curve looks like.
- janalsncm 1y ago
  Strongly disagree. Scroll to the bottom of comment sections on HN, you’ll find the kind of low-effort drive-by comments that are usually at the top of Reddit comment sections. In other words, it helps to have real moderators.
  - k__ 1y ago
    While the tone on HN is much more civil than on Reddit. It's still quite the echo chamber.
    - Jensson 1y ago
      > It's still quite the echo chamber. We have people from every political spectrum here and they don't get banned, how can it be an echo chamber? We have communists, free market absolutists and so on all arguing in the same comment section. I don't think I have seen any thread with many comments where both (or more) sides weren't represented.
      - cookiemonsieur 1y ago
        > We have people from every political spectrum here and they don't get banned, how can it be an echo chamber? I mean sure, they may not get banned, but start voicing an opinion that it even moderately against the status quo and you get downvoted to oblivion.
- mountainriver 1y ago
  Strong disagree as well, this is one of the few places on the Internet which avoids this. I wish there were more
- adolph 1y ago
  > > . . . The groupthink and virtue signaling is intense . . . > Friend, this website is EXACTLY the same And it gnows it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4881042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4881042

dingnuts 1y ago

Friend, this website is EXACTLY the same

rafterydj 1y ago
I understand that the core similarities are there, but I disagree. The comparisons have been around since I started browsing HN years ago. The moderation on this site, for one, emphasizes constructive conversation and discussion in a way that most subreddits can only dream of. It also helps that the target audience has been filtered with that moderation, so over time this site (on average) skews more technical and informed.
- ffsm8 1y ago
  Frankly, no. As an obvious example that can be stated nowadays: musk has always been an over-promising liar. Eg just look at the 2012+ videos of thunderf00t. Yet people were literally banned here just for pointing out that he hasn't actually delivered on anything in the capacity he promised until he did the salute. It's pointless to list other examples, as this page is- as dingnuts pointed out - exactly the same and most people aren't actually willing to change their opinion based on arguments. They're set in their opinions and think everyone else is dumb.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
    I don’t see how that example refutes their point. It can be true both that there have been disagreeable bans and that the bans, in general, tend to result in higher quality discussions. The disagreeable bans seem to be outliers. > They're set in their opinions and think everyone else is dumb. Well, anyway, I read and post comments here because commenters here think critically about discussion topics. It’s not a perfect community with perfect moderation but the discussions are of a quality that’s hard to find elsewhere, let alone reddit.
  - chucksmash 1y ago
    > Yet people were literally banned here just for pointing out that he hasn't actually delivered on anything in the capacity he promised until he did the salute. I'd be shocked if they (you?) were banned just for critiquing Musk. So please link the post. I'm prepared to be shocked. I'm also pretty sure that I could make a throwaway account that only posted critiques of Musk (or about any single subject for that matter) and manage to keep it alive by making the critiques timely, on-topic and thoughtful or get it banned by being repetitive and unconstructive. So would you say I was banned for talking about <topic>? Or would you say I was banned for my behavior while talking about <topic>?
    - computerthings 1y ago
      [dead]
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - janalsncm 1y ago
    Aside from the fact that I highly doubt anyone was banned as you describe, EM’s stories have gotten more and more grandiose. So it’s not the same. Today he’s pitching moonshot projects as core to Tesla. 10 years ago he was saying self-driving was easy, but he was also selling by far the best electric vehicle on the market. So lying about self driving and Tesla semis mattered less. Fwiw I’ve been subbed to tf00t since his 50 part creationist videos in early 2010s.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- Freedom2 1y ago
  This sites commenters attempt to apply technical solutions to social problems, then pats itself on the back despite their comments being entirely inappropriate to the problem space. There's also no actual constructive discussion when it comes to future looking tech. The Cybertruck, Vision Pro, LLMs are some of the most recent items that were absolutely inaccurately called by the most popular comments. And their reasoning for their prediction had no actual substance in their comments.
  - yieldcrv 1y ago
    And the crypto asset discussions are very nontechnical here, veering into elementary and inaccurate philosophical discussions, despite this being a great forum to talk about technical aspects. every network has pull requests and governance proposals worth discussing, and the deepest discussion here is resurrected from 2012 about the entire concept not having a licit use case that the poster could imagine
- Maxatar 1y ago
  HackerNews isn't not exactly like reddit, sure, but it's not much better. People are much better behaved, but still spread a great deal of misinformation. One way to gauge this property of a community is whether people who are known experts in a respective field participate in it, and unfortunately there are very few of them on HackerNews (this was not always the case). I've had some opportunities to meet with people who are experts, usually at conferences/industry events, and while many of them tend to be active on Twitter... they all say the same things about this site, namely that it's simply full of bad information and the amount of effort needed to dispel that information is significantly higher than the amount of effort needed to spread it. Next time someone posts an article about a topic you are intimately familiar with, like top 1% subject matter expert in... review the comment section for it and you'll find just heaps of misconceptions, superficial knowledge, and my favorite are the contrarians who take these very strong opinions on a subject they have some passing knowledge about but talk about their contrarian opinion with such a high degree of confidence. One issue is you may not actually be a subject matter expert on a topic that comes up a lot on HackerNews, so you won't recognize that this happens... but while people here are a lot more polite and the moderation policies do encourage good behavior... moderation policies don't do a lot to stop the spread of bad information from poorly informed people.
  - SamPatt 1y ago
    One of the things I appreciate most about HN is the fact that experts are often found in the comments. Perhaps we are defining experts differently?
    - bb88 1y ago
      There was a lot of pseudo science being published and voted up in the comments with Ivermectin/HCQ/etc and Covid, when those people weren't experts and before the Ivermectin paper got serious scrutiny. The other aspect is that people on here think they're that if they are an expert in one thing, they instantly become an expert in another thing.
      - Jensson 1y ago
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 1y ago
  Do you have any sources to back up those claims?
ddoolin 1y ago
It happens in degrees, and the degree here is much lower.
- turtlesdown11 1y ago
  its actually the reverse, dunning kruger is off the charts on hacker news
  - ddoolin 1y ago
    I don't think there's a lot of groupthink or virtue signaling here, and those are the things that irritate me the most. If people here overestimate their knowledge or abilities, that's okay because I don't treat things people say as gospel/fact/truth unless I have clear and compelling reasons to do so. This is the internet after all. Personally I also think the submissions that make it to the front page(s) are much better than any subreddit.
    - pixxel 1y ago
      [dead]
- bigyabai 1y ago
  I disagree. Reddit users are out to impress nobody but themselves, but the other day I saw someone submit a "Show HN" with AI-generated testimonials. HN has an active grifter culture reinforced by the VC funding cycles. Reddit can only dream about lying as well as HN does.
  - rafaelmn 1y ago
    That's a tangential problem. HN tends to push up grifter hype slop, and there are a lot of those people around cause VC, but you can still see comments pushing back. Reading reddit reminds me of highschool forum arguments I've had 20 years ago, but lower quality because of population selection. It's just too mainstream at this point and shows you what the middle of the bell curve looks like.
janalsncm 1y ago
Strongly disagree. Scroll to the bottom of comment sections on HN, you’ll find the kind of low-effort drive-by comments that are usually at the top of Reddit comment sections. In other words, it helps to have real moderators.
- k__ 1y ago
  While the tone on HN is much more civil than on Reddit. It's still quite the echo chamber.
  - Jensson 1y ago
    > It's still quite the echo chamber. We have people from every political spectrum here and they don't get banned, how can it be an echo chamber? We have communists, free market absolutists and so on all arguing in the same comment section. I don't think I have seen any thread with many comments where both (or more) sides weren't represented.
    - cookiemonsieur 1y ago
      > We have people from every political spectrum here and they don't get banned, how can it be an echo chamber? I mean sure, they may not get banned, but start voicing an opinion that it even moderately against the status quo and you get downvoted to oblivion.
mountainriver 1y ago
Strong disagree as well, this is one of the few places on the Internet which avoids this. I wish there were more
adolph 1y ago
> > . . . The groupthink and virtue signaling is intense . . . > Friend, this website is EXACTLY the same And it gnows it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4881042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4881042