11–20 of 43 posts
HN is still the best community I've found for discussion. I regularly encounter comments that expand my understanding and change my mind.
> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
That said, I've been on HN for over 10 years. There does seem to be a slight increase in low quality / low effort comments as of late. That's probably a function of moderation than anything else. The average number of comments on posts have been growing steadily, and I suspect it's getting harder to moderate.
I don't see YCombinator as having gone down a path of "create something to attract users, then they degrade that to for their "business customers", and finally degrade it further for users and business customers to maximize profits for YCombinator."
It was obvious (to anybody who put even the slightest thought into it) that Hacker News was always, from the very beginning, a way for YC to have access to "hackers" that they could feed into their startup accelerator and venture capital business. And I don't see any sign of that having changed, and certainly not in a way that's made it worse for users of HN. It is what it's always been. They've never tried to hide that.
What I do think has changed is me. And the "community" here over the years.
I'm way way less interested in GenAI and the LLM frenzy than most submitters (and I think commenters) here.
But that's not a new thing, I was never interested in NFTs or crypto/blockchain either. And not just the tech hype topics, I skip over things that just don't interest me at all, like Kubernetes or retro computing or language advocacy/wars.
I also have a (quite possibly wrong) view that as HN's user base has grown, there's a lower percentage of people here for the "hacker" discussions - which I define as the interesting technical stuff, whether computer related or not - and a higher percentage of people here for the latest tech fad or who are just here for the money, and hoping to get noticed by YC or founders, instead of being here out of pure intellectual curiosity.
I look at the https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders list, and I'd guess I recognise probably 1/3rd of the top 50 usernames there. (I have been here a while, since 2009.) I rarely notice those usernames these days, either because they've significantly slowed down in commenting, or perhaps because these days they're commenting in threads I don't open.
I 100% believe that for me, there was a higher signal to noise ratio for both discussions I'm interested in and discussions with people I recognise and respect, than there was 10 or 15 years ago. But I'm still here.
I wish the world were such that it wasn't as important to talk about "politics", but it keeps intruding into HN-relevant areas: defending science, promoting quack science, arresting students, etc. HN is still the best community I've found for discussion. I regularly encounter comments that expand my understanding and change my mind.
I truly do not ask this to be pedantic or snarky, but “enshitification” is a very specific type of platform decay related to business models. How does that apply here?
Yes OP is misusing the term. Redditification maybe?
More people almost always results in more discussions of things that don't interest me, and almost always results in discussions where it's clear some participants have a much more shallow understanding and experience in the topics I am interested in.
Maybe that's just me getting old though?
Folks feel strongly about many social, cultural and political topics. It's a moment and a trend, and certainly not specific to HN. Does it make HN slightly less interesting sometimes? Maybe. But then, is there a forum entirely immune to it? Not really.
Either you radically gatekeep your community to ensure it only allows people discussing topics you find interesting and watch it die as newbies get turned away while stalwarts leave for whatever reason, or you welcome "new blood" with their own interests which are not always completely aligned with your own and watch the community change around you.
And it's not just forums, it happened in usenet, it happens in social circles and friendship groups, it happens in suburbs or neighbourhoods. I'm pretty sure it happened around campfires and caves 50 thousand years ago.
I wish the world were such that it wasn't as important to talk about "politics", but it keeps intruding into HN-relevant areas: defending science, promoting quack science, arresting students, etc. HN is still the best community I've found for discussion. I regularly encounter comments that expand my understanding and change my mind.
I'm with you on forum quality. But in a broader, societal context, smart people being apolitical is one of the ways in which unintelligent people come to dominate politics. Democratic political discourse is slow, inefficient and frustrating. But that is part of the process. The alternative is to such conflict is to let one person or a political homogenous group make the decisions.
I would much prefer if there was a forum for smart people to be pan-political, that is apply their critical thinking skills and demand detailed information from all perspectives. Seems to me that all we have is several echo-chambers where only non-dissenting views and voices are permitted.
I wish the world were such that it wasn't as important to talk about "politics", but it keeps intruding into HN-relevant areas: defending science, promoting quack science, arresting students, etc. HN is still the best community I've found for discussion. I regularly encounter comments that expand my understanding and change my mind.
I'm with you on forum quality. But in a broader, societal context, smart people being apolitical is one of the ways in which unintelligent people come to dominate politics. Democratic political discourse is slow, inefficient and frustrating. But that is part of the process. The alternative is to such conflict is to let one person or a political homogenous group make the decisions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm with you on forum quality. But in a broader, societal context, smart people being apolitical is one of the ways in which unintelligent people come to dominate politics. Democratic political discourse is slow, inefficient and frustrating. But that is part of the process. The alternative is to such conflict is to let one person or a political homogenous group make the decisions.
I agree, HN is not the forum for political discourse. I would much prefer if there was a forum for smart people to be pan-political , that is apply their critical thinking skills and demand detailed information from all perspectives. Seems to me that all we have is several echo-chambers where only non-dissenting views and voices are permitted.