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Hacker News is a social echo chamber

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Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#131

Post by znowi »

Abundance of throw-away accounts to express a potentially unpopular opinion is a good evidence of a groupthink environment. People either afraid to lose karma or be scrutinized or otherwise upset the mods.

I can often see people opening their comments with a hefty preamble, which goal is to justify the following controversial opinion, in hopes that it will not bring or at least lessen the wrath of the mob.

And of course people like their idols, too. When PG makes a comment - it's a godsend and instantly attracts the fervent following. In a similar manner, there's no lack of ardent supporters of Google that will rationalize any move by the company in a way that is good for the world.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#132

Post by ctdonath »

Seems his prime complaint is that resonating consternation is aggressively removed, giving an undue illusion of peace and harmony - and somehow that's a bad thing.

Some issues are social hot buttons, with a roughly even split (if not in actual numbers, then in energy exerted in pushback against the opposing view), roughly equal validity to each perspective, and pretty much no chance of one side reversing their view en masse in short order. Repeated prolonged verbose heated arguments over these subjects will not lead to any meaningful consensus. Their presence tends to erupt as a tangent or non-sequitur to another discussion, destroying the overall thread in a wave of verbose hysteria. Nothing is served by their recurrence; we all know there's a dramatic split on views regarding the subject, we are each settled in our own views thereon, and frequent re-hashing the subject just sours the environment and encourages participants to seek more sensible discussions elsewhere. Ergo, there's no point in letting these recur. PG is right in weighting the algorithm so such destructive & pointless discussions tend to disappear.

Yes, we know such disagreements exist. A policy of "not here, guys" is a good thing. Yes, the issues being suppressed are of great sociopolitical importance; please recognize that decent people can disagree over them, please agree to disagree, and resolving that disagreement will not happen here - but continued rehashing thereof will create a toxic environment.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#133

Post by pg »

thetabyte wrote: post #119

Especially after pg's response to the blog post about sexual assault at CodeMash, I wonder—why can't the flamewar detector just disable comments? I tend to have a lot of respect for pg, and found his apology for what happened in that thread to be admirable. Whether or not preventing discussion of the issue on HN is positive or negative...I have very complex feelings on the issue, and see valid arguments on both sides…

The output of the flamewar detector isn't binary.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#135

Post by kutakbash »

simias wrote: post #98
DougWebb wrote: post #37

I'm curious how many people who have the ability to upvote or flag stories actually do so. For my part, I'm very conservative: - I never flag stories; I may not find a story interesting, but I don't feel it's appropriate to impose my interests on others or 'police' their discussions. - I rarely upvote stories, mostly because I'm usually browsing stories that are already on the front-page. Occasionally I skim through…

I think the problem is that some people are not as thoughtful as you are when it comes to up/downvotes. The terrible "downvote because I disagree" is not as bad as in other forums but it's definitely on the rise. When people use the voting system to express an opinion instead of judging the quality of the comment itself it kills the quality of the discussion very very quickly in my experience. The people who don't ta…

Voting system is a great cleaning mechanism (akin to current in a pond), something that keeps mediocre submissions and poor comments out of sight. If this feature is rationed (eg flow of the current is weakened), comments and posts ought to be rationed as well, otherwise HN gets overwhelmed with poor input.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#136

Post by protomyth »

logicallee wrote: post #104
protomyth wrote: post #95

"The original story linked to a review of peer-reviewed scientific research." I believe the credit we assign to peer reviewed scientific, mathematical, or engineering papers shouldn't be anywhere near the same weight we assign to peer reviewed social science papers. I dealt with quite a lot of these papers early in my career and they do a wonderful job of backing up grant proposals but a poor job of being correct. My…

I think your second sentence reads the opposite of what you mean!

this one?? "I dealt with quite a lot of these papers early in my career and they do a wonderful job of backing up grant proposals but a poor job of being correct."

No, I'm pretty sure I meant they can get you grants but are, on the whole, hogwash. I do admit to using these studies to write grants to get money to do things for people. I was a bit of a crusader in my younger years before I realized the end never justifies the means.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#137

Post by kmfrk »

jlgreco wrote: post #33
kmfrk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Flamewar" is such a Paul Graham term that doesn't really help with dealing with the problem. I'd rather use the reddit terminology of "controversial discussions" where people are coming from very different places. I think the problems with Hacker News has more to do with a failure to account for those situations over the echo chamber discussions where everyone is in (borderline-insufferable) agreement.

A "controversial discussion" is what happens here when we start discussing, say, the merits of different memory management schemes. People entering a conversation in disagreement, presenting opposing views, considering other views carefully, and then writing civil and constructive rebuttals to those opposing views that further the discussion. Not a religious war, a technical discussion that involves disagreement. Tha…

Honest question, how often do people go on to downvote comments and flag threads when discussing memory management schemes?

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#138

Post by minimaxir »

jlgreco wrote: post #67
danielweber wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard about a guy getting hellbanned for flagging all but one of the "Steve Jobs is dead" stories on the day Steve Jobs died. Each time my finger hovers over the "flag" button I wonder ". . . is this really worth the hassle?" Then I close the tab and go off somewhere else. (I've flagged probably 10 things total.) EDIT : jlgreco corrects me. The guy I was thinking of was flag-banned, not hell-banned.

I know some people lost their ability to flag while doing exactly that (the 'flag' link is removed entirely when that happens, the removal of the ability isn't invisible to the user it happens to), but I am unaware of anybody being hellbanned for it.

I was flagbanned because I flag all the blatant content marketing posts. Of which there are many, so that likely tripped a switch.

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#139

Post by protomyth »

spartango wrote: post #103
protomyth wrote: post #95

"The original story linked to a review of peer-reviewed scientific research." I believe the credit we assign to peer reviewed scientific, mathematical, or engineering papers shouldn't be anywhere near the same weight we assign to peer reviewed social science papers. I dealt with quite a lot of these papers early in my career and they do a wonderful job of backing up grant proposals but a poor job of being correct. My…

While my inclination is to agree with your critical view of social science research, I think picking at this example misses the point of the article. The idea that 'hivemind' discussions are drowning out 'other' viewpoints has merit with respect to this forum. There are copious examples, from role-of-government discussions to technical preferences. Indeed, there are cases where the community massively promotes dubiou…

I don't dismiss the whole of the article, but I do dismiss its premise event.

I get the greater point, but I do not like starting off a perfectly fine argument with such a poor premise. It reeks of wanting to write an article on an important subject and using a poorly chosen event as the "catalyst" or "trigger point" for your need to write it. Also, I am not among those who take that sentence from the article as a "statement of truth".

Re: Hacker News is a social echo chamber

#140

Post by jamesbritt »

jlgreco wrote: post #67
danielweber wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard about a guy getting hellbanned for flagging all but one of the "Steve Jobs is dead" stories on the day Steve Jobs died. Each time my finger hovers over the "flag" button I wonder ". . . is this really worth the hassle?" Then I close the tab and go off somewhere else. (I've flagged probably 10 things total.) EDIT : jlgreco corrects me. The guy I was thinking of was flag-banned, not hell-banned.

I know some people lost their ability to flag while doing exactly that (the 'flag' link is removed entirely when that happens, the removal of the ability isn't invisible to the user it happens to), but I am unaware of anybody being hellbanned for it.

I used to check the New page for spam and content-free posts, and flag obvious stuff. Then one day I lost flagging.

I believe that if you flag an item that then becomes popular it counts against you. If you flag a story that has a strong voter-ring or sock-puppet gang then, guess what: You end up being on the losing end and the sock-puppets win.

Such is life.

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