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It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

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Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#201

Post by MrDresden »

I feel that HN has mostly been a business news site for the last 6 years, and has been trending into a more zeitgeist focused site in the last 2-3.

I've fulfilled my need for more technical discussions elsewhere for a while now.

One place I've liked is lobsters.

edit; I'll add that I've also started seeking out deep technical knowledge about a subject in the official places for the subject in question. For instance, for deep discussions on Kotlin I go for the KEEP and Slack channels.

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#202

Post by concordDance »

concinds wrote: post #61

I think as reddit continued to decline, more people here became interested in debating politics, societal stuff since there was no other "serious" place for it. I wish some of that stuff wasn't here, since it takes away from discussions in other threads. But (and I hope dang sees this) occasionally when HN "strays" away from tech it's absolutely brilliant. There's tons of discussion here on some health issues, diets,…

I do think the presence of politics and other "normy" attracting things will trigger and hasten the decline of HN.

A social media site is only as good as its users and sadly the average person has a short attention span, poor reading comprehension and a preference for anecdote and feelings over data and substance.

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#203

Post by tomhoward »

cblconfederate wrote: post #181
tomhoward wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t really align with the reality. HN’s audience is not heavily concentrated in Silicon Vally or the U.S. - less than 10% of the audience is based around Silicon Valley [1]. Most discussion about Silicon Valley companies, individuals and culture is critical and negative. At any time there are multiple articles about “obscure hacking” topics on the front page. Right now there are 10, by my count - though othe…

Discussion fora are usually dominated by a minority. You won't read about the habits, diets and anxieties (housing, options, politics, tools, city life, commute) of people from berlin , moscow , paris, melbourne, while you learn the people, areas and streets of SF by name. HN is a megaphone for globalizing the SV culture.

> You won't read about the habits, diets and anxieties (housing, options, politics, tools, city life, commute) of people from berlin , moscow , paris, melbourne

This seems like a non sequitur from your original complaint (not enough obscure tech content).

But still, this is not my perception at all. HN gets many fantastic comments from people sharing their perspective of their home location and culture. I’m in Melbourne and over the years have written plenty of comments about life in my city and country that were solidly upvoted and well received.

It’s natural that a lot of the discussion on a tech forum will focus on SV being the place where most of the biggest tech companies are, but the real value in HN is the long tail of unique content and comments from all over the world.

As I mentioned in another comment [1], the “notice-dislike” bias, often mentioned here by dang, is a powerful phenomenon, which can lead us to focus too much on what we dislike and overlook the stuff that we do like and that is right there to be found if we take a moment to notice it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28814878

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#204

Post by eirki »

tomhoward wrote: post #177
cblconfederate wrote: post #174

There was a marked shift many years ago. SV seems to have recruited too many people, so inevitably the discussion shifts to the average worker. It's all about management now, so obscure hacking content will not be upvoted. It has also become too 'corporate' , focused on big tech and funding, and not the indie heroes. The comments have become more personal, in line with the me-culture of the time. This is of course a…

This doesn’t really align with the reality. HN’s audience is not heavily concentrated in Silicon Vally or the U.S. - less than 10% of the audience is based around Silicon Valley [1]. Most discussion about Silicon Valley companies, individuals and culture is critical and negative. At any time there are multiple articles about “obscure hacking” topics on the front page. Right now there are 10, by my count - though othe…

If 10% are located in and around one location and the rest are spread around the world, then that would definitely count as 'heavily concentrated' in my book

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#205

Post by beebeepka »

bena wrote: post #101
jiggawatts wrote: post #46

Something I noticed about Slashdot was that it started out talking about the latest processors, software, and Linux kernel patches. Then the conversation ever-so-slowly started drifting towards CEOs, the sharemarket, politics, and the like. It's a side-effect of an aging user base. Young people get excited about New Things! With big numbers! Older people get bored of the latest technological advancements and instead…

I don't think it's a function of age, but of size. As Slashdot got larger, it attracted more people who didn't or couldn't talk about those things.

Larger? I feel like Slashdot has shrunk tremendously over the last 10 years and I believe the shift to politics is the main reason.

I have screenshot that I took a couple of years ago where the entire "Most discussed" section had the word "trump" in it. Every single one. That was the tipping point for me.

Maybe the site is larger now than it was a decade ago but it sure doesn't feel like it.

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#206

Post by tomhoward »

eirki wrote: post #204
tomhoward wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t really align with the reality. HN’s audience is not heavily concentrated in Silicon Vally or the U.S. - less than 10% of the audience is based around Silicon Valley [1]. Most discussion about Silicon Valley companies, individuals and culture is critical and negative. At any time there are multiple articles about “obscure hacking” topics on the front page. Right now there are 10, by my count - though othe…

If 10% are located in and around one location and the rest are spread around the world, then that would definitely count as 'heavily concentrated' in my book

Sure, you can interpret it that way! But the original complaint seemed to imply that a majority (ie more that 50%) of content/discussion here is about/by Silicon Valley topics/ people.

If 90% of usage is outside SV, that leaves plenty of room for content/discussion that is not focused on SV, which is exactly what we see.

But let’s not get into a debate about the meaning of vague terms like “heavily” :)

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#207

Post by corin_ »

Semiapies wrote: post #102
amelius wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and they called it "hacker news".

And it was almost called "Startup News".

Not just almost, it originally was called that https://web.archive.org/web/20070405175109/https://news.ycom...

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#209

Post by desas »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #82
amelius wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and they called it "hacker news".

I always thought is was about "growth hacking"? No?

Nope. I'm not sure that growth hacking was even a term then.

It refers to hacking as in messing about with technology to do exciting, fun, unexpected or novel things

Re: It's weird that most of “Hacker” news is dominated by business news

#210

Post by onethought »

tomhoward wrote: post #203
cblconfederate wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussion fora are usually dominated by a minority. You won't read about the habits, diets and anxieties (housing, options, politics, tools, city life, commute) of people from berlin , moscow , paris, melbourne, while you learn the people, areas and streets of SF by name. HN is a megaphone for globalizing the SV culture.

> You won't read about the habits, diets and anxieties (housing, options, politics, tools, city life, commute) of people from berlin , moscow , paris, melbourne This seems like a non sequitur from your original complaint (not enough obscure tech content). But still, this is not my perception at all. HN gets many fantastic comments from people sharing their perspective of their home location and culture. I’m in Melbou…

I think I agree with the GP here.

A lot of discussion is US centric. Even to the point where people will bring up esoteric Prop-xx legal references and be upvoted as if that is at all relevant in a global context.

I don’t believe the 10% number of SV participation. If it really is 10% I want to know the percentage of contributing commenters.

For instance, I have seen very little Melbourne centric content at all here. Perhaps Canva (though that’s Sydney) and only because of their insane valuation and relationship back into the valley.

Given the Timezone difference, there should be a time period where Australian content dominates, but I don’t even see that.

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