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

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#191

Post by mmmmmbop » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 6:26 PM UTC

It's well documented that user flags affect the ranking of stories even before stories are marked as [flagged]. While flagging certainly contributes to the lack of discussion on your articles, I believe that the main reason is that, for the most part, the Hacker News audience is less interested in your take than it used to be.

Case in point: In recent months, a lot of recent Trump/Elon posts have been flagged and disappeared from the front page, but still managed to garner hundreds of points and comments. My assumption is that a significant portion of users use hn.algolia.com, circumventing the flagging algorithm. Personally, I've recently found myself using hn.algolia.com (filtering for top stories in the last 24h) more often than news.ycombinator.com.

If your issue was purely flagging-related, your articles should be able to generate engagement. That's why I'm saying I think there is a lack of interest.

Personally, while I appreciate your work, it's become less interesting to me over time. The value of your blog to me is mainly around getting a perspective into how a die-hard Apple fan would think about a certain topic. This was fun in the period from 2007 until some point in the mid-2010s, when smartphones were revolutionary and the iPhone vs. Android ecosystem battle was still relevant. But ever since phones converged into commodities, it just stopped being interesting. No one is emotionally invested in their choice of phone anymore.

Don't take my word for it. Compare the Google Trends for MacRumors [0] and Daring Fireball [1]. Both faced a sharp decline starting in the mid-2010s. It's not a surprise that engagement on Hacker News would mirror those trends.

[0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#192

Post by steveBK123 » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 6:27 PM UTC

bloopernova wrote: post #188

ryandrake wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty much all the stats coming out recently show youth male vote has gone much more +R than in recent history, so could very well be the case of the next gen of SWEs joining HNs and being mad about affronts to orange man.

Some of it just feels like a small part of a constellation of cultural/society/business leader behavioral changes which are the natural pendulum swing overcorrection from peak +D sentiment in summer 2020 going back to the other end.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#193

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 6:29 PM UTC

k_roy wrote: post #146

jgruber wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've enjoyed your work for close to multiple decades, probably fell on it back in 2005 from MacRumors, but much less in recent times. And I don't want to knock anyone's work, but I'll give you my perspective in good faith. 1. Writing about Apple simply isn't interesting anymore. Nor has it been for close to a decade. They lost me around the butterfly keyboard fiasco. I know this isn't the full body of your work, but…

> 1. Writing about Apple simply isn't interesting anymore. Nor has it been for close to a decade. They lost me around the butterfly keyboard fiasco.

I think this might have a lot to do with it. I considered myself a devout Apple fanboy a decade ago, but every software release and new product they've developed has been less and less interesting. It feels like they're abandoning me as a customer as I get older. And every former fanboy has that one "straw broke the camel's back" moment they can point to where they lost the faith. For you it was the terrible keyboards, for many it was the headphone jack. For me, it was a tiny change: They quietly dropped support for 1080i resolution around the time of macOS 10.5 or 11. Suddenly my Mac that ran my home theater could no longer drive my TV, just because Apple decided "fuck this guy, we're not going to support this anymore."

I still have an iPhone 7. No phone released since then have I really cared about enough to bother upgrading. I don't give a shit about emojis and chat stickers and more annoying notifications that butt into my life.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#194

Post by erickhill » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 6:31 PM UTC

spenrose wrote: post #139

robenkleene wrote: post #134

The anger reading the comments here from the folks who don't like DF/Apple is practically palpable, and that's obviously the reason the articles get flagged. I'm not sure where all that anger comes from (e.g., there isn't any company I've ever been as angry about as some of the commenters on this thread are). I suspect the response I'd get if I asked would be Apple did this or that, but personally, if I didn't like t…

I suspect it's driven by the Olde School Linux / Free Software contingent of HN commenters / voters. Here is an example[1]: "The #1 story on Hacker News at 2023:08:21T15:41Z is a 2021 discussion of Linux desktop packaging tools. Hypothesis: HN story up-voters are heavily drawn from Free / Open Source Software folks interested in issues that were broadly discussed in "tech" two decades ago (Linux for the desktop!) and…

There are also a lot of older Windows users, and users of failed platforms from the 80s and 90s, that absolutely hold deep seated anger at Apple and Steve Jobs. There were similar attitudes about Microsoft and Bill Gates in the 90s. After Gates left Microsoft a lot of that vitriol seemed to have dissipated, but some still aim it at Apple. The anger seems to usually be economically rooted, i.e. in terms of how Apple charges high prices for their hardware.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#195

Post by pb7 » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 6:33 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #142

jgruber wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I would guess a change in HN audience (anyone want to throw in COVID-19?) and a decline in Apple's popularity in general.

[flagged]

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#196

Post by steveBK123 » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 6:33 PM UTC

robenkleene wrote: post #148

erickhill wrote: post #48

People on HN are human beings, and there are definitely Apple tribes and non-Apple tribes. Gruber also posts more now than in recent memory political observations and commentary. As he's gotten older his blog has expanded beyond just the Apple scene. While I've always felt DF got insta-banned by fanbois of other tribes regardless of the content of his posts (which should be discouraged here in some way imo) it's quit…

Can anyone name another company that has something similar to a "non-Apple tribe"? And if not, why not? Which is really the question I can't figure out, why Apple makes some folks so angry and the same doesn't happen with other companies. (Preempting the only example I can think of, would be Internet Explorer, circa ~2000, which isn't really comparable because no one was defending IE then.)

Tesla?

TikTok?

Meta?

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#197

Post by krapp » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 6:35 PM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #196

robenkleene wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone name another company that has something similar to a "non-Apple tribe"? And if not, why not? Which is really the question I can't figure out, why Apple makes some folks so angry and the same doesn't happen with other companies. (Preempting the only example I can think of, would be Internet Explorer, circa ~2000, which isn't really comparable because no one was defending IE then.)

Tesla? TikTok? Meta?

Microsoft and Mozilla.

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#198

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 6:36 PM UTC

proline wrote: post #190

jgruber wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#199

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 6:51 PM UTC

0898 wrote: post #71

Why is this article flagged? Hacker News and Daring Fireball have so much in common: 1. Both long-running sites 2. Both serve a curious and tech savvy audience 3. Both run zero graphics 4. Both appreciate / provide long-form journalism They should be fine bedfellows. What's going on?

[deleted]

Re: The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

#200

Post by nickpp » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 6:52 PM UTC

Maybe it’s because Apple is rarely doing anything interesting these days and an unidimensional pundit's excruciatingly detailed analysis of that - is even less interesting.

Add to that a writing style that is often biased, arrogant and inflammatory and you get even less interesting comments on this site.

Exactly the same for Tim Bray, btw - except for Android stuff.

There used to be a time when this stuff was hot, people took sides and breathlessly read anything they could find about the new stuff being released. That time has passed. We stopped caring.

I can understand the demoting.