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Poll: Should we ban TechCrunch?
Ask YC: Ban TechCrunch?
I know this was discussed a few months ago, but I think TechCrunch has significantly changed for the worse over that time. It is too biased and unprofessional to serve the important role in the startup community that it has assumed. My 3 problems with TechCrunch are:
1) Strong negative bias
TechCrunch has started personal vendettas against Last.fm (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/22/deny-this-lastfm/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/20/did-lastfm-just-hand-over-user-listening-data-to-the-riaa/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/23/another-blanket-denial-by-lastfm/) where they continously bring strongly trust anonymous reports but practically ignore official statements from Last.fm and CBS. Furthermore, all those posts were made entirely based on anonymous sources, without reaching the Last.fm/CBS parties for comment.
2) Strong positive bias
The last 500 posts on TechCrunch contain 1200 mentions of Twitter. Twitter is clearly getting more TC coverage than any other startup in existence. Twitter and Twitter Search are always mentioned as a source, but you'd never see the phrase "a Google search reveals..". On top of that, TC covers random and uninmportant events such as a 104-year old woman using Twitter (followed by a denial), an astronaut using Twitter (followed by a denial), a cat using Twitter, Kanye West not being happy with Twitter, ad nauseam.
3) Censorship
There are reports of people that had their comments deleted from TC because they argued againt TC's position. The most recent example is http://twitter.com/alexmuller/status/1903186356
Should TechCrunch be banned from News.YC?
- juvenn 17y agoI do think TechCrunch's articles are getting boring and boring
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y agoDo you feel newbies are being misled? Isit not the case that older hands are sufficiently aware of TC's proclivities? Is it not enough simply to flag the contributions when they are clearly wrong, or down-mod stupid, irrelevant or content-free comments? What would banning them add? Is it impossible that they might yet say something useful?
- axod 17y ago>> "Is it impossible that they might yet say something useful?" I'm struggling to remember the last useful TC 'article'. Any example? edit: It's quite hard to remember a TC article that didn't mention twitter also ;) Maybe it'd be better to just create 2 front pages - one with everything, and one which removes some of the less useful gossip sites. I agree with the OP - in the last few months TC seems to have descended into gossip and rumor.
- quellhorst 17y agoThe last useful techcrunch article I recall was them covering the youtube website before anyone else.
- aj 17y agoAgreed. But how much does that benefit outweigh the obvious negative? And is the amount of bile being spewed by the TechCrunch writers good for the startup community?
- alek 17y agoYou can't downvote submissions and TC is great at linkbait headlines, which get upvoted before people read the actual post. That's the problem.
- axod 17y agoAgreed. And you can't undo an upvote :(
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y agoYou can flag submissions, you can learn not to up-mod something before you actually read it, and you always just not click on the link! There's a parallel here with language choice. Some languages let you shoot yourself in the foot, and others try desperately to protect you. Newbies might need and benefit from the protection, power users often get frustrated at being prevented from doing things. My principle is: when there's a balance to achieve, don't forbid things.
- ErrantX 17y agoflagging doesn't guarantee removal though does it? Flagging an article IS a way to note you think it is wrong, or malicious etc. BUT it is a private thing.. there is no indication how many others agreed etc. Perhaps adding the # of flags might be an option (or some indication)
- lucumo 17y ago> you can learn not to up-mod something before you actually read it Others would need to learn that.
- pmjordan 17y agoThis suggestion may seem a little odd, but how about only enabling the up arrow once the URL has been visited? (via that javascript visited link colour trick, perhaps) It won't stop deliberate thoughtless upvoting, but nothing will.
- noonespecial 17y agoI'm gonna go with ban but not categorically. I'd guess most of us have TC in our RSS feeds. We don't need reposts to HN for every new blurb that comes along. Rarely there is an interesting tidbit that merits discussion here. Rarely. We don't really need to use HN as an aggregator. That said, the voting system does a decent job of keeping excessive TC off the front page. Lets just agree to think about the kind of discussion that can be had about each TC submission and act accordingly.
- progLiker 17y agoI'm reading it in an rss reader, and likes it, it's tech porn. I can live with banning, but I hope for the sake of the readers here that banning be overruled when they come up with some really interesting stuff, which may happen. That makes me a voter for moderation of TC, but against rigid banning.
- bakineggs 17y agoYou could do what I do and just not click on any link to a TechCrunch article.
- dreamz 17y agoAND/OR - if you think its a biased reporting then you may also comment about it everywhere (HN, Techcrunch, etc.) - though you may have to provide more details about why you think its a biased reporting, this way you'll gain creditability and put techcrunch on their toes about their own prestige and reputation ...
- aj 17y agoWhat's the bet that if this poll is for the ban, there will be a negative post about HN? :))
- markessien 17y agoTechCrunch is a value source of information. When you ban all different voices, you end up with a site where everyone is saying exactly the same thing all the time, and it will increasingly attract the same type of demographic. This will result in an intellectual mono-culture.
- ujal 17y agoWhat is the purpose of this ban? To tell: TC we dont like you!?
- pierrefar 17y agoMy suggestion is to limit the number of stories that can be submitted and/or made popular in a day. So if one story makes it to the front page in the past 24 hours, news submissions from the same site are disabled. The time period can be manipulated (12 hours, one week, whatever). This will limit the effect of TC and a few other sites that are very frequent front-pagers without merit IMHO.
- Tichy 17y agoThat seems rather random. What if there actually are two good articles from the same site within 24 hours?
- alexk 17y agoIf you don't like TechCrunch, "ban" it for yourself, why do you need a collective approval for this? Sorry, I think HN does not deserve polls like this one.
- axod 17y agoIn that case, why is valleywag banned? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=160704 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=160704 Collective screening of linkbait/spam articles is useful IMHO.
- apgwoz 17y agobecause it's banned, I just had this great nostalgic moment. "Remember when ValleyWag used to clog news.yc with crap?" Glad those days are behind us.
- nailer 17y agoYou haven't provided nay supporting arguments for what makes VW different from TC or CH.
- zimbabwe 17y agoValleywag is specifically about insulting individuals involved with companies. TechCrunch focuses on breaking news, even when a good deal of the time it's crap, and CodingHorror might be uneducated but Jeff Atwood is still writing things that are relevant to this site. We don't need articles about Julia Allison and Tina Fey. I think Valleywag is actually better-written than those other two. It just happens to be completely off-topic.
- apgwoz 17y agoi wasn't attempting to justify either. I was merely remebering the days when VW littered the front page. I sometimes feel the same about TC, as well, but TC does tend to feature interesting startups I'd have otherwise missed. And in my opinion the signal to noise ratio on their rss is too low to justify subscribing
- noor420 17y agoI don't think PG can ban TechCrunch articles. TechCrunch covers all YC startups and PG provides them with thousands of hits via HN. Win win for both $$$, PR for startups and AD money for techCrunch. Anyone think otherwise? Am I wrong?
- quellhorst 17y agoInstead of a ban, we should allow users to create filters. I would filter TechCrunch and codinghorror.
- delano 17y agoThe world already has a Reddit.
- Hexstream 17y agoIIRC PG doesn't want to implement that because the quality of the front-page would presumably diminish if people could selectively ignore sources of low quality for themselves.
- quellhorst 17y agoHow do you explain not being about to down-vote submissions?
- joecode 17y agoYou know, it occurred to me if you're committed, you could just vote up all the other stories. Same effect. There's flagging, too, of course.
- pg 17y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=623583 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=623583
- zimbabwe 17y agoWhy do you think selective filtering would ruin the front page? It's the equivalent of "don't click on Techcrunch articles", but it makes it much easier and removes the visual nag. (For that matter, has there ever been a social news site whose primary method of filtering links was letting each individual user ignore things? It might be an interesting way to maintain a community.)
- cubicle67 17y agoWould it be possible to have a list of 'I don't want these' sites in our profiles, so I'm able to enjoy HN without every 8th link being for TC, but other more masochistic readers can have all the TC they can endure?
- mooism2 17y agoMaybe, but we still have to decide whether or not to show them to anonymous readers.
- geoffw8 17y agoI'm afraid I happen to like TechCrunch. Techcrunch is a news outlet, it writes about what people want to read. The internet is MUCH bigger than you and I my friend.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- kierank 17y agoTwitter is clearly getting more TC coverage than any other startup in existence...On top of that, TC covers random and uninmportant events such as a 104-year old woman using Twitter (followed by a denial), an astronaut using Twitter (followed by a denial), a cat using Twitter, Kanye West not being happy with Twitter, ad nauseam. This happened with Facebook too and to some extent Youtube. In my opinion TC are doing the same as most of the media: People join X social networking site Media writes about X site People feel positive with a "hey, they're talking about X, I use X. This publication/site is relevant to me" feeling More people join X
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- raganwald 17y agoI see a lot of comments discussing the quality of TC's scurrilous writing. May I suggest you ignore that? TC itself is almost irrelevant to the question of banning. Even if it is false, linkbaiting dreck. Instead of considering the quality of the links, try looking at the quality of HN discussions about those links. Do HN discussions add insight and interest? Do they raise or lower the quality of discourse here? Some discussions devolve very quickly into name-calling, negativity, and mindlessness. Some elevate into insightful observations and positive debate. Look at the discussions and think about whether HN should encourage or discourage them. My thought is that if TC discussions on HN are positive, there should be no ban regardless of the quality of the links. But if there is a preponderance of negative discussions around its links, it may be in HN's interests to simply walk away without any further ado.
- enneff 17y agoIf I were less time-poor I would resume maitaining a set of Greasemonkey scripts to filter out Tech Crunch and the like from HN and aggregation/community sites I visit. However it would be nice if PG would whip up a user-specific "ignore-these-domains" field in the user prefs. (Just a text box for a comma-separated list would suffice.) The thing that annoys me about TC is that their headlines are so inflammatory that I just have to click them to find out what they're beating up now, and always instantly regret it. Perhaps the key is developing better self-control.
- CalmQuiet 17y agoA ban would allow no incentive for them to change their behavior. As it is, the up/down voting gives them feedback on an post-by-post basis as to what matters to HNers. [ Just in case they care. ] In regard to one post: Let's not "protect" noobs from "bad info" - except to the extent that we noobs can see what the overall HN population thinks of value of specific articles. That is the power of what HN has to offer to begin with! --and it gives more feedback about specific articles (e.g., if there is no (or few) upvotes) than if no feedback at HN existed about particular posts.
- alek 17y agoHN's total traffic is 1/12th of TechCrunch's. I doubt HN visitors click on many ads, either. So I don't think our opinion will strongly affect TC's editorial policy. I'm sure their style is a very concious decision.
- swombat 17y agoI think we should ban polls about banning TechCrunch.
- ivan_ah 17y agolol...
- axod 17y agoLets go the whole hog and ban comments suggesting we ban polls about banning TechCrunch.
- samson 17y agoaxod, I'm starting to think you've got a vendetta against TechCrunch. Did they give your startup a bad review?
- axod 17y agosamson, As we all know, if your startup plan relies on getting a review on TC, you're going to fail. Some people are living in a bubble, so they think a review on TC matters. My gripe with TC is that lately, most of their articles have been based on "anonymous sources" or gossip. Having said that, I don't really mind too much either way if they're banned or not. I'd much rather they started reporting unbiased facts and news.
- pj 17y agoReal estate is important and for every link to techcrunch, and for that matter, cnn, nytimes, washingtonpost, and all the other mainstream sources there is less room for somethign outside the mainstream and finding that stuff outside the mainstream is why I have liked HN so much in the past. The lack of that kind of watered-down-for-the-masses content is why I found HN so appealing. I would much rather read hacked together transcripts from Dijkstra's brain. It's not so much that I have something against those publications, but rather that it is easy to get that content somewhere else. People forward it or it's at digg or something. Which niche is HN meant to fill? It seems like as the population of a community approaches infinity, the mainstreamness of the content approaches 100%.
- Dauntless 17y agoWhat the hack is your problem? If you don't like it then don't vote it. Who are you to impose your will over everyone else?
- ErrantX 17y agoFirst off I am not a fan of TC at all - I actually do read some of the articles but only through 3rd linkage. That said I think CHOICE is a good thing. For example I filter CodingHorror and TechCrunch (and a few others - Seth Godin is the only major one that springs to mind) for a variety of reasons. I chose not to view them. But some people do like to read them (even if it is just for a laugh ;)). If you want to ban them there is a Userscript to filter them, if not, then dont :D I personally have lost all respect for TC recently: poor reporting, poor sourcing, extreme attention grabbing headline, petty squabbling and generally insulting pointless stuff :P But that is just my opinion, others might find it relevant! Were hackers not censors.
- ahoyhere 17y agoYou can ban all the sites you like, but it won't stop the decline of critical thinking on HN.
- colins_pride 17y agoWhat do you mean?
- jbm 17y agoI am not sure what loss of "critical thinking" you are referring to. I don't think anyone is losing mental marbles, nor do are stories getting that bad. (Admittedly, I couldn't stand the stories a month or two, but things seem to be on the upswing again). The discussion is usually interesting for any highly-moderated story on the front page. Ironically, questioning the mental prowess of other posters without mentioning a rationale for it contributes to a decline in quality of the conversation taking place. Maybe you could be more specific?
- ahoyhere 17y agoThere's no loss of "mental marbles," that implies insanity rather than a lack of a faculty most people don't have to begin with. Are individual people losing it? Probably not. But I point out logical inconsistencies where I see them, and when people miss the big picture (which is often) of a given problem or discussion. Take the once-a-week discussion of pro-formal ed/anti-formal ed. It's always the same, the same ego-stroking and ego-defense, and most people are clearly working purely off their own biases, without even the benefit of having read any of the professional criticism / praise of the systems in place in the US, or learning theory, or theory of achievement, so on & so forth. They talk to talk, since they are convinced of their own genius. This is "expressing yourself" at its worst. Commentors are unfamiliar with basic rhetorical principles - calling certain things 'ad hominem' when they are genuinely relevant observations that have to do with the person, claiming that facts are pure and all that must be considered, falling prey to obvious bids for trolldom (time_management), etc., etc. All of the above has, in my opinion, increased a lot in the past year & even last 6 mos. (Not to mention the shifting of content towards more & more regurgitated 'productivity porn,' tired old pablum that you could get from any 20-year-old Anthony Robbins tape or 60-year-old Peale book, or even older classical advice manuals.) The alternative is that I'm suddenly a much deeper thinker than I was, and I don't think that's the case.
- peterhi 17y agoAll we should really be asking for is that the site that a link is to is clearly labelled. Most Coding Horror links are marked as such, as are TC links. Perhaps this could be built into HN so that when people forget to put it in it will still be indicated. But is it really such a big deal, don't click on the TC links and if you end up on TC just use the back arrow. Nothing too difficult is it?
- TweedHeads 17y agoSubmariners, payperpost, fud, propaganda and astroturfing are plaguing HN lately, even if people don't want to acknowledge that obvious fact. They are like a disease, we better find a cure before it is too late.
- pg 17y agoCan you give me some examples?
- chanux 17y agoWe shouldn't be biased. Techcrunch links are sometimes crap, sometimes good. So completely banning wouldn't do any good. Let's solve it the HN way. Just don't up vote what you don't like. OK, you say, "I don't, but they get votes somehow". That, my friend, is _probably_ because community is polluted.
- TweedHeads 17y agoWhat would stop ten or twenty shills from an "interested party" to upvote all their stories to get to the front page? One you detect that pattern you should ban them to avoid further spreading of bad behavior. And I am not talking about TC only...
- pg 17y agoIf so it's been polluted from the beginning, because TC articles have always gotten votes here. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=81 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=81
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- uptown 17y agoSo you say their referencing Twitter too much is justification for banning their content ... then you use a Twitter post to back up another one of your points? That's funny.
- senko 17y agoWhen I see link to TC or CodingHorror (and a few other sites') post, I first read all the comments here on HN. Even if the story is complete garbage, one can find good insights in the discussion inspired by it; often with enough data so that I don't even need to read the original if I don't think it worthwhile. With a blanket TC ban, I'd either miss out on a good bits (if I didn't follow TC feed directly), or be more annoyed (if I did follow it and read most of what they post). So I think the commentary here is much better filter of good vs crap than any ban or automatic filter would do.
- macco 17y agoI really don't like TC, but I am against banning.
- vitriolize 17y agoNo one seems to be commenting about the fact you can vote for both which I just did. Call me undecided. TC sucks, but banning sites kinda goes against the whole free speech, freedom of information thing. I'd support built-in content filters on an opt-in basis. That sounds like a good idea.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- chanux 17y agoOops.. I think I just voted twice for no & once for yes.
- nazgulnarsil 17y agothat depends on what we're getting out of techcrunch links. are the links linkbaity and generally lacking in content? absolutely. do said stories generate any interesting insight from commenters on HN? absolutely. I think the solution is that when techcrunch covers something that merits discussion, find a different source to link to as the discussion seed.
- jlees 17y agoI don't think we should ban anything on HN. Surely the 'collective wisdom' approach taken by a community like this is such that if the prevailing wind is anti-TC, then TC posts simply won't get upvoted? Ah, for a perfect community.
- hs 17y agoyc is in bed with tc, you won't get too far with this
- dunk010 17y agoThey're crap, but I'd prefer we keep with freedom of speech...
- davidw 17y agoI'm against banning TC (and think this poll doesn't really matter too much in any case, as it's entirely up to pg), but how would TC being banned from HN impinge on their freedom to say what they want? 'Freedom of speech' does not imply that anyone has to transmit what you say.
- johnconroy 17y agoBan TC?? no. Behave yourself. this is total bullshit. i don't remember Arrington ever claiming to be some kind of guardian angel of startups, and dole out his attention evenly and equitably. As with any other blogger, if Twitter interests him and his people right now, that's what they're going to talk about. IF you don't like his blog, take your news from elsewhere. But ban TC?? Ridiculous.
- ilitirit 17y agoI think that people should just start flagging posts they don't want to see. If people are already doing that, then it could mean the HN has grown beyond what the early adopters consider to be the critical mass.
- shimonamit 17y ago1) I had a comment censored after (politely) correcting the author on a technical fact in one of his posts. 2) Yes, the quality of this blog is definitely declining and taking on more of a gossipy tone. But no, I would not ban TechCrunch. Sometimes they have interesting stuff. Instead I would focus on trying to find better methods for HN to attract and mold a better community. That's the real challenge.
- loincloth 17y agoThe classy man's "yes" vote is made by... are you ready?... not. reading. TechCrunch. o.O And then obviously not linking to it, etc. Show some respect for freedom.
- GrandMasterBirt 17y agoThe simple fact of the mattter is... just make a blog post: "TC sucks ass" and make it good. It gets voted up, and vuala unofficial ban since nobody gives a shit.
- numbchuckskills 17y agoWhy don't we print out all of the TC posts over the last year, publish them into several volumes, distribute to all the "YES" voters, and then we can have an extravagant TC post burning party? I can coordinate snacks.
- wavesplash 17y agoThe problem isn't TechCrunch as a whole. It's just that Mike has stopped caring so he's constantly gaming the system just to create drama. In effect he's personally become the new Valleywag.
- vaksel 17y agoWill never happen. pg and YC get too much free media exposure due to techcrunch covering YC companies.
- chollida1 17y agoPerhaps all news.ycombinator.com needs is a hide link like reddit has so that these stories don't take up mindshare for the folks who don't want to see them.
- mstefff 17y agowe all read the site so why bother posting it here too?
- john-grimes 17y agoNo use using bias in your board to avoid bias in the articles it links to.
- rmason 17y agoTechCrunch is opinionated, they have favorites. Controversy sells and Arrington and crew are masters at it. Just don't click on the TechCrunch posts if they bother you.
- joecode 17y agoActually, the general low quality of articles on Techcrunch is a good reason not to ban them here. Usually they have one good/important article every day or so, and having them linked to from here saves me the trouble of sorting through the junk over there.
- btilford 17y agoIf it cuts down on the useless spam in my reader do it. Honestly HN needs to categorize things 80% of the news here I could care less about (i.e. twitter, startup 9,000,001, I had a company that failed, bla bla)
- pg 17y agoAndr, what site do you think is a better source of news about startups?
- tptacek 17y agoHacker News.
- pg 17y agoDifferent sense of "source." We're the table of contents, not the articles. I meant source in the sense TC is.
- tptacek 17y agoHacker News + Primary Sources > TechCrunch.
- pg 17y agoTC's stories often are the primary sources, especially for news about new startups.
- gojomo 17y agoBut isn't much of that because of favor-trading and TC's occasionally-stated threat: "give us an exclusive or we'll cover you less"? Similarly, one of Arrington's recommendations at the 2008 YC startup school was: if you want good coverage, leak us info so "we remember that down the road". When there's a choice between two sources for the same story, I'd prefer the one where editorial judgment isn't driven by the constant filling and draining of a favor bank... even if that means using a source that's second-to-report.
- tptacek 17y agoNote well: "primary source" doesn't mean "first to report". It means "closest to the event".
- devin 17y agoYes && No Yes because I /personally/ don't care for it. No because not all of /us/ do.
- lleger 17y agoI've got a love-hate relationship with Techcrunch. I love it because it's so big and it has a lot of good, breaking news. I hate it because they're terrible journalists who have a lot of problems with writing style and logic.
- tlrobinson 17y agoFor the last time: NO. Most of the articles on TC are boring, so I don't subscribe to their RSS feed. The few interesting ones do get posted to Hacker News. So instead of banning this site or that site, just focus on making sure good articles get the to front page, and flag the TC articles that you feel aren't worthy.
- ankhmoop 17y agoThe prevalence of linkbait Coding Horror, TechCrunch, and Rails-Drama articles has resulted in a significant reduction in my daily reading of HN. I'm interested in reading and commenting on informed, insightful articles. TechCrunch, Coding Horror, and Rails-Drama are not insightful, often factually incorrect, always incendiary -- linkbait flytraps for junior technologists.
- mingyeow 17y agoWow, this poll is as polarizing as techcrunch
- sounddust 17y agoI'd be fine with banning TC for the simple reason that every time I see a TC story on HN, I've already read it. There's no sense in seeing it twice, especially since nearly every single TC story is promoted to the front page. I think that 100% of HN members are aware of TC, and have already chosen whether to put it in their feed reader or not.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- knightinblue 17y agoOk, so it's basically half and half. Now what?
- rms 17y agoIs it mainly new or low karma users voting a particular way on the poll? Also see the first time this was asked, including appropriate response from Arrington. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=181539 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=181539
- pg 17y agoPeople who voted to ban TC had an average karma of 350 and accounts 318 days old, and people who voted against it had an average karma of 562 and accounts 367 days old. > (let voters (map !2 ((item 625256) 'votes)) (list (round (avg (map [karma _] voters))) (round (avg (map [days-since (uvar _ created)] voters))))) (350 318) 16 people have so far voted both to ban TC and not to: > (let novoters (map !2 ((item 625257) 'votes)) (len (keep [mem _ novoters] (map !2 ((item 625256) 'votes))))) 16
- aj 17y agoUm, I noticed that you the item number you used was 625256 but the URL has 625255 (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=625255 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=625255) But then I have no idea what language or query that is so I probably misunderstood
- wlievens 17y agoActually, I think HN serves as a TC filter. TC articles that show up on HN are typically (though not always) the better ones.