See also "You'll Never Guess Which Recent DF Article Was 'Flagged' at Hacker News" (with reports from other sites: Tim Bary, Oliver Reichenstein):
* https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/27/youll-never-gue...
The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss
181–190 of 305 posts
Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
It must work that way. When I flag articles and they don't immediately show as `[flagged]`. I would guess the number of flags is weighted by upvotes, maybe (but less likely) by the karma of the person flagging the article. The software must track who flags articles since you can lose flagging privilege if you do it frivolously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173809 As far as I know, once an article is flagged…
I think from the way stuff is getting flagged & the comments, it's really a change in the user base becoming slowly less techo-anarchist/libertarian and more rightwing/authoritarian curious. Something really in the water the last few years in tech circles. Or maybe just disgruntled as the stock compensation infinite money printer has ended.
I'd love to see the results of some kind of sentiment analysis on HN comments over time. My hunch is that HN's user base has gotten deeply more rightwing over the years, similar to what's happening in many other online communities. Related to getting more rightwing: I'd also guess (without knowing the data) that the flagging:user activity ratio has steadily grown over the years. HN users are no longer willing to simply downvote comments/articles they disagree with and move on. We are becoming more interested in attempting to silence these comments/articles via flagging.
Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe. I landed on "shill" because it's a word he chose, and it seemed to fit when I read it. Let me try and define what it means, and how it's different from an advocate, an apologist or a sycophant. A shill promotes something to others partly because that thing's success aligns with their prosperity. That causal chain motivates them to look past the thing's flaws, the people it negatively impacts, and the merits of…
Yeah, that was where I had a problem — a shill in my mind always toes the line, cannot be objective. (I'm too dense to understand your last sentence. :-) Sometimes when I take time to cogitate on a thing it will come to me though.)
A good shill won't always toe the line. That would be too obvious.
A shill should levy just enough dissent to retain some credibility among the most credulous. Usually by piling on to obviously losing causes. For instance if someone were an Apple shill, saying that the App Store review process is broken, the royalty split is untenable, XCode is shite and Apple's AI has been pretty bad are all obvious positions to take. These are blatant, undeniable positions.
Someone could have those public positions and still be a shill.
Is Gruber a shill? I mean, he seems entire dependant upon the Apple fanbase[1] for his income, and a lot of his credibility comes from access that Apple directly grants him. They give him products. He gets to host his "Talk Show" live at WWDC. He has done a number of interviews with Apple executives. He seems pretty firmly attached to the Apple teat and they serve up a supply of nutritious milk for him.
The base post was flagged, presumably because it used the shill label, but it's pretty hard to get away from it. And maybe that's perfectly fine, and the industry has a lot of shills for different things and we all factor in where they're coming from. Most HNers expect a "rose coloured glasses about Apple" perspective from Gruber, so it is weighted against the content.
[1] The Apple fanbase are a subset of Apple users. I'm typing this on an M4 Mac. My iPhone and iPad sit beside me. I'm a subscriber to Apple One Premier. Yet I'm not a fan. I don't, for instance, care at all how much profit Apple makes, much less excitedly gloating about what percentage of the market's profit they make. Nor do I get angry that Samsung copied some UI element or phone shape. Those are fan type topics.
Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
It must work that way. When I flag articles and they don't immediately show as `[flagged]`. I would guess the number of flags is weighted by upvotes, maybe (but less likely) by the karma of the person flagging the article. The software must track who flags articles since you can lose flagging privilege if you do it frivolously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173809 As far as I know, once an article is flagged…
I think from the way stuff is getting flagged & the comments, it's really a change in the user base becoming slowly less techo-anarchist/libertarian and more rightwing/authoritarian curious. Something really in the water the last few years in tech circles. Or maybe just disgruntled as the stock compensation infinite money printer has ended.
[deleted]
Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think from the way stuff is getting flagged & the comments, it's really a change in the user base becoming slowly less techo-anarchist/libertarian and more rightwing/authoritarian curious. Something really in the water the last few years in tech circles. Or maybe just disgruntled as the stock compensation infinite money printer has ended.
I'd love to see the results of some kind of sentiment analysis on HN comments over time. My hunch is that HN's user base has gotten deeply more rightwing over the years, similar to what's happening in many other online communities. Related to getting more rightwing: I'd also guess (without knowing the data) that the flagging:user activity ratio has steadily grown over the years. HN users are no longer willing to simp…
Precisely my observation
Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss
#186I 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: fo…
[deleted]
Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss
#187I suspect it may be a mix of various factors: 1. The HN audience’s preferences have changed over time 2. There’s way more competition – the amount of great content to share and discuss has increased a lot 3. Gruber apparently does not write as much or as well as he did a decade or so ago (at least according to many Daring Fireball readers I know) 4. Yes, many readers don’t like him, but I would also say that many rea…
So you think I was consistently at #3 “as much and as well” from 2007-2021, and declined to #72 “as much and as well” quality in the last 4 years?
I am not sure to be honest, hence “apparently”. It also might be the case that this is less important than the other points I mentioned.
I’m also not sure you could say you were “consistently” at #3 from 2007 to 2021. That would be like saying you were “consistently” at #5 from 2007 to 2025.
Let’s check other periods:
From 2020 to 2021, you are ranked #13 [1].
From 2018 to 2019, you are ranked #26 [2].
From 2017 to 2018, you are ranked #15 [3].
From 2015 to 2016, you are ranked #179 [4].
From 2014 to 2015, you are ranked #33 [5].
[1]: https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/?start=20...
[2]: https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/?start=20...
[3]: https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/?start=20...
[4]: https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/?start=20...
[5]: https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/?start=20...
Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think from the way stuff is getting flagged & the comments, it's really a change in the user base becoming slowly less techo-anarchist/libertarian and more rightwing/authoritarian curious. Something really in the water the last few years in tech circles. Or maybe just disgruntled as the stock compensation infinite money printer has ended.
I'd love to see the results of some kind of sentiment analysis on HN comments over time. My hunch is that HN's user base has gotten deeply more rightwing over the years, similar to what's happening in many other online communities. Related to getting more rightwing: I'd also guess (without knowing the data) that the flagging:user activity ratio has steadily grown over the years. HN users are no longer willing to simp…
I'd like to see whether the perceived rightward direction is new, younger people joining, or older people changing.
Determining that scientifically is going to be near impossible.
Kinda like convincing people to adopt Slashdot's moderation and meta-moderation lol.
Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you think I was consistently at #3 “as much and as well” from 2007-2021, and declined to #72 “as much and as well” quality in the last 4 years?
If you discard that point (and it is a very subjective one and so easy to discard) there are still four other points that might have some weight.
Are they? I mean, none of them are very objective.
Except that #5 is objectively not true. Apple execs pay attention to DaringFireball. What he posts matters for that reason alone.
Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss
#190For posterity, here's a spreadsheet of all Daring Fireball submissions to HN, sorted chronologically: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1A7ljmWbHtFsB4VRJ1Q0d... From first glance there's still some decent traffic on Daring Fireball submissions, even inside the times Gruber asserts deadweighting.
How then do you explain DF being #3 from 2007-2021 and #72 from 2021-2025? It’s clearly not blacklisted, but clearly is shitlisted, no?
Have you looked into how much of DF was about Apple and how much was about Donald Trump during the affected time periods? It seems that you write about tech a lot less and politics a lot more. Which is fine, it's your blog! But don't expect tech enthusiasts to automatically be interested in your opinion on immigration or whatever.