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Ask HN: Is HN slowly starting to experience enshitification?

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31–40 of 43 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is HN slowly starting to experience enshitification?

#31
>but I'm increasingly seeing more ideological posts that are especially not hackerish,

hasnt changed. When you give anonymous people the ability to censor the speech of others, it creates a bad situation that will always enshitify.

People who get censored always leave. The remaining cohort loses more than just that who specific censored subject. Leaving the site a bit shittier and declining.

It's really the design of the site that will result this way.

Re: Ask HN: Is HN slowly starting to experience enshitification?

#32
post #3

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?

Nope, sorry, that isn't how language works. It now means "anything anyone believes is turning into shit for any reason." And there's nothing anyone can do about that.

Re: Ask HN: Is HN slowly starting to experience enshitification?

#33
post #30
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because ...all hackers from all over the globe will ...uhm, suffocate and die if they don't want to deal with political drama in the US.

I think GP meant not realizing that one is unavoidably immersed in politics.

That might be true but that doesn't mean we want to talk about it all day long every single day.

Obviously HN's moderation and flagging system is a long way from perfect, but in general it does work.

Re: Ask HN: Is HN slowly starting to experience enshitification?

#34
> “enshitification” ??

I don’t think that word means what you think it means:

“…then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.“ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification)

Ycombinator is not degrading the quality of this forum. You’re unhappy with the qualities of posts from free user participation (which is everybody; no premium paid tier users). Totally different situations.

Re: Ask HN: Is HN slowly starting to experience enshitification?

#35

> “enshitification” ?? I don’t think that word means what you think it means: “…then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.“ ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification ) Ycombinator is not degrading the quality of this forum. You’re unhappy with the qualities of posts from free user…

Someone already commented this and I responded to that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44254640

Re: Ask HN: Is HN slowly starting to experience enshitification?

#36
post #30
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because ...all hackers from all over the globe will ...uhm, suffocate and die if they don't want to deal with political drama in the US.

I think GP meant not realizing that one is unavoidably immersed in politics.

That's false though. I don't give a shit about fashion either and everybody wears clothes. But I don't have to listen to people moralize constantly about how important it is I listen to their shitty regurgitated takes on houndstooth.

The everything is political crowd demand an army behind them even though they aren't worth following.

Re: Ask HN: Is HN slowly starting to experience enshitification?

#37
post #13

I don't think it's enshittification in the sense that Doctorow coined the word. 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 wa…

> I don’t think it’s “enshittification” in the sense Doctorow coined the term.

While I didn’t mean it only strictly in the original sense and instead also used it as a synonym for general decline, I still think it fits the definition more or less, since while my post got appropriately flagged for not meeting guidelines, a lot of posts, mainly ideological and current events, that also do not meet the guidelines don’t get flagged these days [1][2], and since moderation is part of their service, the service is degrading, likely so that this site will grow.

> What I do think has changed is me. And the "community" here over the years. > 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 genuine “hacker” discussions—by which I mean the interesting technical stuff, whether computer-related or not—and a higher percentage here for the latest tech fad, for YC or founder attention, or just for money, rather than pure intellectual curiosity.

Even though I’ve been here only a few years, I still feel the same way.

> I 100% believe that for me, there was a higher signal-to-noise ratio for both the discussions I’m interested in and the people I recognize and respect, than there was 10 or 15 years ago. But I’m still here.

I’ve gradually stopped visiting most popular sites, be it social media, forums, etc. because as they grow, the noise overwhelms the signal, and the original reason to visit vanishes for me. I still will be here too but probably not for long.

[1] https://www.hntoplinks.com/year?sort=upvotes [2] https://www.hntoplinks.com/year?sort=comments

Re: Ask HN: Is HN slowly starting to experience enshitification?

#38
post #12

From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html : > 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 gr…

I agree that it’s a function of moderation, but I also think moderation is deliberately done in a way to drive/keep engagement; otherwise, there would be far fewer ideological, current-events, and non-“hacker” posts that receive a lot of comments and upvotes.

For example my post got appropriately flagged while a lot of other popular post don't get flagged even though they don't meet the guidelines: https://www.hntoplinks.com/year?sort=upvotes https://www.hntoplinks.com/year?sort=comments

Re: Ask HN: Is HN slowly starting to experience enshitification?

#39
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. 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…

I’m super interested in this topic of “how to keep a community alive”, (1) introducing new blood - with the risk mentioned above - at a regular pace, and (2) keeping existing members as alive/active/connected as possible. Would anyone here have good reads linked to that topic, I’m interested to share - writing this, I just realize I should’ve asked my friend Copilot too. One interesting framework linked to this I fou…

You want everyone to gain a little more than they give up, then your logistics bring people into interaction with your value proposition and the community grows.

Re: Ask HN: Is HN slowly starting to experience enshitification?

#40
post #14

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 submit that the Socratic approach is the preferred tool.

Almost always. Most adults with whom I try to apply it tend to get defensive and "offended" pretty quickly though. People don't like to have their world views challenged methodically.
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