Lately I’m seeing more comments though that interact with others like a LLM. Curt demands/instructions as in “show me a source” / “explain this aspect”. Makes me wonder about who the site is attracting
It’s too easy to downvote and flag someone. It also became extremely difficult to have a substantial discussion here due to “being off topic” and non-transparent post quotas.
There’s also an astonishingly high number of people who supposed to be smart and educated but are in fact just a bunch of idiots with hurt egos rolling on karma.
Plus on Reddit people often delete their heavily down-voted comments (I dont know if this actually matters for a users karma but people sure do think so) which makes it impossible to follow the entire discussion and see what was actually going on.
Nothing as frustrating as finding what seems to be an interesting and engaging discussion but then finding several key posts missing...
I agree for the most part but I've been getting bored with HN, mostly because anything controversial is censored by the mods and by ideological fans of certain people, especially Elon Musk whose fans will flag and downvote anything negative about him. This thread is a good example:
I’ve been an HN participant for ~14 years, the vibe ebbs and flows. You can hide and ignore the folks you mention, what’s important imho is that the mods continue to aggressively cultivate a specific community vibe. Nothings perfect, but this is as close as it’s going to get to perfect imho as it relates to intellectual curiosity and understanding how the systems we exist in work.
As far as I can tell, censored by mods is quite rare. It's almost always for violating the site guidelines (repeatedly and/or extremely flagrantly), rather than based on the ideology of the content. Most of the "censorship" is downvoting and/or flagging from users, not from mods.
But you can post almost anything here. You want to post Marxist stuff? You can, but you need to be more than just a propagandist. Actually thoughtfully interact with opposing ideas; admit when the data is against you.
You want to support capitalism? You can do that too, but again, be more than a shill (though being a shill for capitalism is more accepted here).
You want to criticize the US? Many of us do, from time to time. But again, don't just be a propagandist or ideologue. "USA is only evil! Down with USA!" gets censored. "The United States is acting like a bully in international relations, and has a long history of doing so" is (mostly) accepted as a reasonable and accurate statement.
You want to support Hitler, Stalin, or Mao? Yeah, that's a tougher sell here. You're probably going to get downvoted to oblivion for it.
It's still a YC property, at the end of the day. HN is more open than a lot of sites, but it has to be. HN's lifeblood is advertising for YC jobs and YC-affiliated startups, without free admission the site would be a self-defeating meritocracy.
Once you land the YC startup job and lurk around here for a few years, it starts to feel like the same links and comments regurgitated over-and-over. It's a valuable resource for brand-new tech workers that want to sharpen their mind a bit, but also a tarpit of backwards thinking once you reach a certain level of seniority.
Yeah definitely still the best.
Lately I’m seeing more comments though that interact with others like a LLM. Curt demands/instructions as in “show me a source” / “explain this aspect”. Makes me wonder about who the site is attracting
It’s too easy to downvote and flag someone. It also became extremely difficult to have a substantial discussion here due to “being off topic” and non-transparent post quotas.
There’s also an astonishingly high number of people who supposed to be smart and educated but are in fact just a bunch of idiots with hurt egos rolling on karma.
Tangentially; I keep finding I flag things accidentally due to mainly browsing on mobile.
It helps that downvotes are limited to -4. Can’t have your entire profile obliterated by one misstep comment like on Reddit
Plus on Reddit people often delete their heavily down-voted comments (I dont know if this actually matters for a users karma but people sure do think so) which makes it impossible to follow the entire discussion and see what was actually going on.
Nothing as frustrating as finding what seems to be an interesting and engaging discussion but then finding several key posts missing...
I agree for the most part but I've been getting bored with HN, mostly because anything controversial is censored by the mods and by ideological fans of certain people, especially Elon Musk whose fans will flag and downvote anything negative about him. This thread is a good example:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46592827
I’ve been an HN participant for ~14 years, the vibe ebbs and flows. You can hide and ignore the folks you mention, what’s important imho is that the mods continue to aggressively cultivate a specific community vibe. Nothings perfect, but this is as close as it’s going to get to perfect imho as it relates to intellectual curiosity and understanding how the systems we exist in work.
> You can hide and ignore the folks you mention
How?
As far as I can tell, censored by mods is quite rare. It's almost always for violating the site guidelines (repeatedly and/or extremely flagrantly), rather than based on the ideology of the content. Most of the "censorship" is downvoting and/or flagging from users, not from mods.
But you can post almost anything here. You want to post Marxist stuff? You can, but you need to be more than just a propagandist. Actually thoughtfully interact with opposing ideas; admit when the data is against you.
You want to support capitalism? You can do that too, but again, be more than a shill (though being a shill for capitalism is more accepted here).
You want to criticize the US? Many of us do, from time to time. But again, don't just be a propagandist or ideologue. "USA is only evil! Down with USA!" gets censored. "The United States is acting like a bully in international relations, and has a long history of doing so" is (mostly) accepted as a reasonable and accurate statement.
You want to support Hitler, Stalin, or Mao? Yeah, that's a tougher sell here. You're probably going to get downvoted to oblivion for it.
It's still a YC property, at the end of the day. HN is more open than a lot of sites, but it has to be. HN's lifeblood is advertising for YC jobs and YC-affiliated startups, without free admission the site would be a self-defeating meritocracy.
Once you land the YC startup job and lurk around here for a few years, it starts to feel like the same links and comments regurgitated over-and-over. It's a valuable resource for brand-new tech workers that want to sharpen their mind a bit, but also a tarpit of backwards thinking once you reach a certain level of seniority.