Ask HN: How has Hacker News changed over the years?
10 comments
HN has always been a mixed bag: It takes some work to sift through the links and comment section to find gold.
Some times I come across old threads in Google searches and I’m shocked by the quality of the older discourse. It’s much harder to find threads with deep, nuanced conversations today than it was even a few years ago.
The sharpest change happened around the start of the pandemic when everyone started working from home. I think HN became a social outlet for more people all at once. Combine that with pandemic-related frustrations and the vibe here became sharply angrier. Even dang has mentioned the pandemic-related influx of angry users in a few comments.
Lately I’m also surprised at how anti-tech and pro-regulation the comment sections have become. Recent Facebook threads are the best example of a lot of angry, low-effort comments (do we really need 100 comments from different people bragging about quitting Facebook every time the topic comes up?).
Some times I come across old threads in Google searches and I’m shocked by the quality of the older discourse. It’s much harder to find threads with deep, nuanced conversations today than it was even a few years ago.
The sharpest change happened around the start of the pandemic when everyone started working from home. I think HN became a social outlet for more people all at once. Combine that with pandemic-related frustrations and the vibe here became sharply angrier. Even dang has mentioned the pandemic-related influx of angry users in a few comments.
Lately I’m also surprised at how anti-tech and pro-regulation the comment sections have become. Recent Facebook threads are the best example of a lot of angry, low-effort comments (do we really need 100 comments from different people bragging about quitting Facebook every time the topic comes up?).
I agree. As of very recently, a VERY large proportion of my comments have been downvoted, and some of them even went greyed out. I used to often post against the grain of broad consensus of the site (think: the "Tenth Man" style rule, whether it's fictional or not) to inject a perspective of someone from a very different background. Nobody had a problem with that. It's as if people are far more irritable these days and just won't engage with the comment beyond hitting the downvote button.
For the anti-tech and pro-regulation sentiment, I admit I've been a part of that. I cannot disagree that hundreds of posts saying the same thing are monotonous, but I cannot bring myself to criticise it because then I'd be silencing a PoV that is mine.
For the anti-tech and pro-regulation sentiment, I admit I've been a part of that. I cannot disagree that hundreds of posts saying the same thing are monotonous, but I cannot bring myself to criticise it because then I'd be silencing a PoV that is mine.
Fully agree. I see very many well written though provoking comments these days almost completely greyed out. In 2019 they would have provoked discussion and created interesting threads.
I am pretty sure the people that follow have not changed all that much. I kinda suspect bots and big scale opinion moderation. You can usually tell in the comments and weird down/upvote spikes that the concensus is artificially generated.
The only discorse censored are one way. Against concensus. Up until early 2020, being agains concensus was perfectly fine on HN granted you provided a quality source. And usually made for fun though provoking reads.
HN has not sunken so low on opinion sharing that it had become the absolute disaster that reddit has. Sadly its getting close though.
The only discorse censored are one way. Against concensus. Up until early 2020, being agains concensus was perfectly fine on HN granted you provided a quality source. And usually made for fun though provoking reads.
HN has not sunken so low on opinion sharing that it had become the absolute disaster that reddit has. Sadly its getting close though.
Here’s my tenth man take: playing devils advocate is the laziest form of intellectual engagement and lends weight to positions that should have no weight at all.
I don't play devil's advocate position for fun. I do it because my stance on a lot of issues deviates from the HN's consensus, and I want my point of view to be at least considered.
>It's as if people are far more irritable these days and just won't engage with the comment beyond hitting the downvote button.
Given the viputerative nature of discussions here, that's probably better for the health of the community (and your own mental and emotional health) than posting a comment most of the time..
Given the viputerative nature of discussions here, that's probably better for the health of the community (and your own mental and emotional health) than posting a comment most of the time..
> It’s much harder to find threads with deep, nuanced conversations today than it was even a few years ago.
My impression has been similar. The original discourse, logical reasoning and critical thinking is seriously lacking now in discussions.
I see higher frequency of "citation needed" type of low effort comments that assume no one posting can have original thinking without it being thought by someone else and published already somewhere else online. In similar vain, responses seems to be very severe and personal when someone finds something online contrary to what someone posted. More and more HN participants seem to assume if it is published and available online, specially in research paper format or discoursed by a "popular" personality, it has more credibility irrespective of quality.
On the positive side, I see lot more variety of topics discussed on HN, previously topics used to be mostly tech and startup related and very infrequently finance related. Now, I can find discussions even related to energy, material science, medical sciences etc though lacking in depth.
IMO, overall HN reflects rest of the internet, availability of more and more information easily accessible has reduced the ability to critically analyze and logically reason through problems and present arguments.
My impression has been similar. The original discourse, logical reasoning and critical thinking is seriously lacking now in discussions.
I see higher frequency of "citation needed" type of low effort comments that assume no one posting can have original thinking without it being thought by someone else and published already somewhere else online. In similar vain, responses seems to be very severe and personal when someone finds something online contrary to what someone posted. More and more HN participants seem to assume if it is published and available online, specially in research paper format or discoursed by a "popular" personality, it has more credibility irrespective of quality.
On the positive side, I see lot more variety of topics discussed on HN, previously topics used to be mostly tech and startup related and very infrequently finance related. Now, I can find discussions even related to energy, material science, medical sciences etc though lacking in depth.
IMO, overall HN reflects rest of the internet, availability of more and more information easily accessible has reduced the ability to critically analyze and logically reason through problems and present arguments.
For me, I've noticed a downfall in the quality of content that ends up on the front page compared to pre-pandemic times.
Quite a lot of good stuff gets lost in the "new" page.
Quite a lot of good stuff gets lost in the "new" page.
Standard disclaimer that this is from my fallible memory. I’ve been here just about daily since 2009 or so (at first, under a real-name account that I retired, because times a’changed).
Of course, there were far, far fewer users. They had much less forgettable names. There wasn’t the preponderance of throwaways that you see now. My impression was that a large portion of the users were actually affiliated with YC companies, and a lot of the discussion was about YC business and tech. Paul Graham was an active commenter. You got to know who the regulars were, and recognize them by name. I find that much harder to do now.
As far as content, I honestly can’t remember whether there was really more tech, or more business, or less politics. What I do is that the issues, and the way people frame and debate them, has changed a lot in 12 years. But that’s not specific to HN. HN seems to lag behind “the discourse” on more mainstream social media sites, and I think that’s good.
Sometime around 2011 (?) there was a crisis in which there was a great deal of debate over a period of months, about whether the quality of comments and discussion was declining. I was of the opinion that comment quality had been extremely high at first, and was in fact slipping. The other side said we were imagining things, and Eternal Septembering or whatever. pg eventually sort of agreed there was a problem, and asked for solutions. There was much debate. He made some tweaks to the site.
But the perception of decline remained. pg seemed to gradually back away from what he had created. At some point we got the high-profile active moderation you see today. pg has been almost entirely absent for years now.
Of course, there were far, far fewer users. They had much less forgettable names. There wasn’t the preponderance of throwaways that you see now. My impression was that a large portion of the users were actually affiliated with YC companies, and a lot of the discussion was about YC business and tech. Paul Graham was an active commenter. You got to know who the regulars were, and recognize them by name. I find that much harder to do now.
As far as content, I honestly can’t remember whether there was really more tech, or more business, or less politics. What I do is that the issues, and the way people frame and debate them, has changed a lot in 12 years. But that’s not specific to HN. HN seems to lag behind “the discourse” on more mainstream social media sites, and I think that’s good.
Sometime around 2011 (?) there was a crisis in which there was a great deal of debate over a period of months, about whether the quality of comments and discussion was declining. I was of the opinion that comment quality had been extremely high at first, and was in fact slipping. The other side said we were imagining things, and Eternal Septembering or whatever. pg eventually sort of agreed there was a problem, and asked for solutions. There was much debate. He made some tweaks to the site.
But the perception of decline remained. pg seemed to gradually back away from what he had created. At some point we got the high-profile active moderation you see today. pg has been almost entirely absent for years now.
Not sure if it was in my head or not as I look back, but seemed like more technical articles (not that there aren't plenty still). I remember the thing that drew me into HN was when a coworker showed me, and there was in depth conversations about compiler design that I had never experienced before. I was such a cool way to discover new ideas that I hadn't even heard of. It still is for sure, but I'm going to chalk my personal case up to rose colored glasses.
Maybe it is just selective memory, but I feel like the "Show HN" became a lot less fun.
We're there always this many dead accounts? It seems like I see dead accounts on almost every thread these days. Most of which are for good reason...
Well I've seen dormant accounts suddenly spring to life with an insightful comment or two about my own comments. Some of the 7 years old or more, suddenly coming to life.
I feel like nowadays whenever certain companies are mentioned there's tons of comments just ranting how they hate company X, not even mentioning anything to do with the article.
It’s totally useless and they don’t contribute to discussion at all.
It’s totally useless and they don’t contribute to discussion at all.
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I have been a user for years now, mostly just skimming through when I get the time. It's been extremely positive whenever I became engaged. I don't knock peoples attempts to money grab. You have to eat and there's money here. However, it makes me cringe nonetheless. What I'd really like to see more of (and maybe it's here and I miss it) is when people do share their startup or something, give the nitty gritty and try in all ways possible to make it beneficial to this community, through learning, some sort of engagement or pure giving stuff away. Give a little and HN will always deliver.
I am not classifying any of these as good or bad. Consider it as a list of observations.
* There were more stories about the technical platforms of startups. Most of the time, the technical founders joined us here for those discussions. We had heated discussions on the philosophies of DHH vs PG. Now we don't hear about those bootstrapping stories or seed investments anymore.
* The quality was greater, in my subjective opinion. I lost count of the number of useful or interesting experimental thoughts or ideas I read only here. On no other social platform could I find such diverse and thought-provoking thoughts and ideas. On more than one occasion, when I asked a question about a company or a framework, the founder or creator replied. They all seemed to converge here. It was amazing.
* This place had a lot of active Googlers of every age range. Now, people identify themselves as FAANG employees more often than not.
* Show HN (or its equivalent) used to be very active. Now, when I go there, the page looks like a ghost town.
* There were more stories about the technical platforms of startups. Most of the time, the technical founders joined us here for those discussions. We had heated discussions on the philosophies of DHH vs PG. Now we don't hear about those bootstrapping stories or seed investments anymore.
* The quality was greater, in my subjective opinion. I lost count of the number of useful or interesting experimental thoughts or ideas I read only here. On no other social platform could I find such diverse and thought-provoking thoughts and ideas. On more than one occasion, when I asked a question about a company or a framework, the founder or creator replied. They all seemed to converge here. It was amazing.
* This place had a lot of active Googlers of every age range. Now, people identify themselves as FAANG employees more often than not.
* Show HN (or its equivalent) used to be very active. Now, when I go there, the page looks like a ghost town.
I see a lot more greyed out comments recently.
What changes do you like/hate?