The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss • Hacker News Board

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#121

Post by rchaud » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 1:50 PM UTC

jgruber wrote: post #44

throwaway_0501 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not being blacklisted or censored (see other comment with link to submissions). My suspicion: it's not relevant to the HN audience. DF is opinion pieces (mostly) about Apple. While I'm sure many DF readers use some Apple device(s), I suspect many (most?) DF readers do not care about "inside baseball"[0] for Apple. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_baseball_(metaphor)

How then do you explain DF being #3 from 2007-2021 and #72 from 2021-2025?

Have you considered the possibility that the world has changed after 2020, and there's more to discuss re: technology and society than whatever Apple is up to? We've had Covid, meme stocks, Jan 6th, Huawei bans, Ukraine, NFTs, stablecoin collapses, Twitter takeover, AI everything, Chinese EVs, Tiktok ban....this list goes on.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#122

Post by owebmaster » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 1:50 PM UTC

jgruber wrote: post #120

owebmaster wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What exactly do you think my "tactics" were/are? I've only ever submitted one article of my own to Hacker News. This one.

the content in the blog is yours, no? So people posting things that would cause flame wars from your domain is still your responsibility? At some point people stop engaging to disagree and start to flag. Your karma doesn't reflect the score expected from the blogger behind the top #3 website of HN. This should tell us something.

Supporting a monopoly like Apple will sure attract a lot of detractors in a forum named "hacker news". The same would happen to Microsoft supporters 20 years ago.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#123

Post by RajT88 » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 1:51 PM UTC

While I avoid reading DF whenever possible personally, I'd never flag posts.

I am sure only the moderators have visibility into what's going on here. I would hazard a guess that the user base of HN itself has changed in recent years. It's probably no accident that Gruber points out the ranking shifts in 2021 - a lot of things shifted 2020/2021 due to downstream pandemic impacts.

It's hard to speculate without mod-level visibility though. I'd love for them to weigh in.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#124

Post by rchaud » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 1:57 PM UTC

anthonyskipper wrote: post #109

He is a horrible apple shill, but he does have great insight and articulate reasoning on why things are the way they are. We should figure out where the block is and remove it.

It's the kind of articulation you'd see in a McKinsey pitch deck. It's corporate apologia, heavily skewed towards Apple. His takes on Apple's 30% cut and the EU telling Apple to allow third party app stores, tell me he's speaking from the investor's POV than a developer's or consumer's.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#125

Post by jgruber » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 2:02 PM UTC

gcp123 wrote: post #57

As someone who's been reading Daring Fireball since 2004 and considers themselves an Apple fan, I think the algorithm is working exactly as intended if it's designed to limit intellectually dishonest content. Gruber has built a career on a predictable pattern: vociferously defend Apple's every decision (even contradicting his own previous positions when Apple changes course), construct elaborate post-rationalizations…

How then do you explain DF being HN's #3 personal blog from 2007-2021, but #72 from 2021-2025? Do you recall HN announcing a major algorithm change?

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#126

Post by robenkleene » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 2:03 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #16

It's certainly possible there's a backend flag on the site. But from the comments I see on Reddit, I suspect there may be a simpler explanation: a lot of people for some reason really dislike John Gruber and view him as someone who slavishly praises Apple. I'm a big John Gruber fan, and I don't think this is true in the slightest. I think he thinks carefully, forms his own opinions, and is very willing to intensely c…

I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I don't think it's unique to DF. As someone who values design, I've noticing for a long time that it's become harder and harder for design-related content to gain traction on HN (e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26901208).

I think the explanation here is that HN has taken a hard turn towards Linux/OSS. Not to say those weren't always popular topics, but HN used to be a place for software and hardware generally, with an emphasis on making things, OSS being an obviously important component of that. Now OSS is emphasized more. To illustrate, let's do a thought experiment: Let's say someone in the industry does a detailed explanation of the VFX pipeline for a blockbuster movie, and compare that with an someone doing the same for an indie side-project using Blender. There was a time both of those would have been popular on HN, today I'd only bet on the second making it to the front page. Note I'm not making a value judgment here, just something I've observed.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#127

Post by jgruber » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 2:06 PM UTC

SanjayMehta wrote: post #110

spiderfarmer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case I agree with Gruber. Responding by blogging and citing is better for both websites.

Seems hypocritical to me. He admits wanting to see the comments here while not supporting them on his own site.

How is it hypocritical to hold the view that some places are intended to be open forums for comments from anyone, and others are not?

Also, by not hosting my own comments, all public commentary on my writing is thus out of my control. I don't get to block comments I don't like here, or on Mastodon, or Twitter/X, or Bluesky. I think that's actually for the better.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#128

Post by jgruber » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

do_not_redeem wrote: post #107

I don't see how a blog post complaining about vote counts is any more interesting than a comment complaining about vote counts. But ok, I'll bite. The articles are not ranked well because they're not interesting or useful. The one DF article I remember seeing recently is "Why Can’t We Screenshot Frames From DRM-Protected Video on Apple Devices?" and it seemed like just a fluffy post without any technical info and wit…

How then do you explain DF ranking #3 from 2007-2021, but dropping to #78 from 2021-2025? Are you saying my writing was significantly more interesting and useful for the first 14 years but dropped off a cliff starting in 2021, and the keen HN audience noticed the change immediately?

You're making a perhaps-legitimate case for why DF should never have ranked well at HN. But the data shows that the opposite is true: for 14 years it was very popular here.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#129

Post by jgruber » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 2:23 PM UTC

znpy wrote: post #104

I really don't see what's the issue here. Some people don't like Apple. Also: > Initial reviews of the much-anticipated iPhone X appeared on October 31, but I’d only had the phone for 24 hours when the embargo dropped Having Apple hardware before official launch (when review embargo is still on) tells me that the author will never publish bad press for apple, and is not to be trusted on reviewing Apple hardware. Appl…

> Apple is know for stopping shipping pre-release hardware to people that are honest in their review and that might call out questionable choice.

I've been doing this for a long time and I'm not aware of a single case where this has happened. I'd love to write about this, so please let me know which reviewers, who had previously been seeded with review unit hardware from Apple, were dropped after they wrote honest review. (I don't think what you're describing is, in any way, an accurate description of Apple's relationship with Lewis Hilsenteger.)

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#130

Post by jgruber » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

whamlastxmas wrote: post #100

Moderation on HN is probably the most transparent you’ll find anywhere aside from Wikipedia, and HN is better than WP in terms of unbiased moderation. Dang and team have a stellar reputation and the idea that they’re covertly blacklisitng a personal blog is really silly. OP’s submissions are likely not popular because of a mixture of them being not that interesting or useful and also contentious. Contentious submissi…

My thesis is that HN would like you to think their moderation is highly transparent, and it's very clear that the core HN audience believes that to be true, but that in fact it is not transparent at all.

If the problem is with my writing "being not that interesting or useful and also contentious", how then do you explain Daring Fireball ranking #3 here from 2007-2021 but dropping to #78 from 2021-2025. Do you think my writing was that much more interesting and useful (and less contentious?) for the first 14 years of HN but changed suddenly in 2021?

Or do you think HN's hidden admin moderation changed suddenly around 2021?