> Still, as an occasional reader, I have noticed certain trends. When stories that focus on structural barriers faced by women in the workplace, or on diversity in tech, or on race or masculinity—stories, admittedly, that are more intriguing to me, a person interested in the humanities, than stories on technical topics—hit the front page, users often flag them, presumably for being off topic, so fast that hardly any comments accrue.
I have noticed this trend for a long time also, and well before this article was first written. It seems to go in waves though I'll cautiously say that it seems to have gotten somewhat better in recent years. I remember a time in the mid-2010s when these kinds of stories would disappear almost instantaneously. Now some of these articles and topics get a good number of upvotes and occasionally even substantive dialogue.
That said, the comments sections on these articles do tend to devolve pretty quickly.
That kind of stuff has infected so much of modern discourse, if people want to talk about it there are plenty of forums for it. Why should we all stop what we're doing and prioritize discussing a niche political cause who's proponents have been blackmailing people everywhere into paying attention to them and have now come to dominate all sorts of forums and secure power, ironically with no benefit to the people they feign support for.
And when people say they want it discussed, they don't mean they want to read diverse opinions, they just mean they want to see orthodoxy regurgitated.
But the question of how to handle politics on HN is not simple. By the same principle of trying to optimize for curiosity, some content with political overlap is interesting and belongs here. The questions are which forms of it, how much, which particular links, etc.. I feel like after 10 years we arrived at a pretty coherent and stable general answer to that. Not that we get every specific call right—we don't. But the general principle has held up.
For anyone wondering what I'm talking about, here are some past explanations:
@dang I hope you write a book someday on everything you've learned as the main mod of HN for the past decade or however long you've been doing it.
It would be an absolute treasure trove of how to manage public forums and social media, especially as it evolves from a small niche community to a larger one, maintaining as much of its original character as possible, and in a highly politicized, adversarial, and mis/dis-info saturated information environment.
Hopefully he'd include an entire chapter on why he and HN failed so spectacularly at pretty much every turn during the pandemic, especially when it came to the lab leak theory discussions.
I'm not sure what you mean by failed spectacularly, but if I'm reading you right, then your comment is a good example of a reliable phenomenon: nearly everyone with strong passions on a political topic feels like HN is biased against, and even is suppressing, their position. (In one memorable case, the topic we were accused of suppressing was actually the single-most-discussed topic on HN by a long shot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962. That's how intensely these passions work: even the biggest story gets perceived as censored.)
Let's look at the specific topic you mentioned. HN had plenty of discussions about the lab leak theory, starting in late 2020 and all through 2021. I've listed some below; there were others (and of course many more in 2022 and 2023). Some fell off the front page rather quickly but the biggest ones spent 15, 16, 18 hours on the front page.
Everyone's memory about the pandemic has been retroactively revised by now, but as I recall it, the rehabilitation of the lab leak theory in (semi-)mainstream discourse began when Nicholas Wade published his article in the Bulletin. HN discussed that one thoroughly (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432) and there had been several major frontpage threads even before that.
(There of course were many threads arguing the opposite as well - I'm just listing these because they're the relevant ones for answering the GP. If this post makes you feel like HN was too supportive of and/or too suppressive of the opposite side, please re-read the first paragraph - it seems to work the same way in all cases.)
> nearly everyone with strong passions on a political topic feels like HN is biased against, and even is suppressing, their position
I believe that you have expressed this stance for at least several years now.
Perhaps these people's perceptions are well founded. It seems as if an orthodoxy is being enforced & people whose opinions that run counter to the orthodoxy, particularly when the orthodoxy is covertly political while masquerading as a truism.
You replied to an email from me stating a similar position...except you pointed out opinions of both the left & right of the political divide are moderated. I don't think that's that's the important imbalance though. It's the unorthodox who are more heavily moderated. There's a double standard, where the orthodox frame is given far more leeway, even to the point of breaking guidelines, without moderation.
I don't see much public self reflection on the moderation...mostly denial & self justification whenever someone brings it up. Seems like the same gas lighting that the corporate media, "thought leaders", the management class, the expert class, & elites push onto their subjects.
Perhaps some of the "strong passions" are in part inflamed by the negative reinforcement of the moderation activities...being punished for expressing observations & thoughts, taking a stand on covertly political topics, expressing the unorthodox. I have learned to not care about being downvoted or flagged or being threatened to be banned from this site or told to slow down as long as I am seeking truth & expressing in pursuit of truth. If my karma goes negative, so be it. I've learned to not be impressed by vanity metrics.
Right now it seems that nobody moderates the moderators...meaning there's no effective feedback about moderation activity. The moderator can simply use the same canned denial whenever any form of critique comes up. The downvoter or flagger can use the same knee jerk reaction to quash any self determined unapproved expression. It's too easy. It creates covert hostility on the site.
One thing that could help is transparency of voting & flagging. The people who do these activities also have bias & I don't think it's always done in good faith nor does it always support the stated guidelines of this site. Perhaps a form to explain why the downvote or flagging was done & how the guidelines or culture of the site was violated would reduce retaliatory downvoting/flagging.
If I make a comment I put in effort to think about & express my opinion in the public record. I'm motivated to put forth this effort when I think like I can contribute some to the discussion...which often occurs when the trend of the discussion is perceived to possibly be leading down a false or unoptimal path...an unorthodox view.
Downvoting/flagging should also require effort to weed out retaliation & have a cost if done in bad faith. If someone feels justified & can express why they are justified in downvoting/flagging, why not make it public record as well? The person whose expression was downvoted or flagged will have feedback to improve their expression if they violated a HN guideline. As it stands now, the author has to guess...with a possibility that the downvoting/flagging occurred in bad faith.
I appreciate whoever reads this long comment. I have learned much about human & cultural nature in participating with this site & I am grateful for this.
I read it, though I don't feel like I've benefited at all.
Dang cited examples; you haven't.
You appear to be going on feeling. I'm an intuitive thinker and subject to that myself. When I've collected data, I often realise that I was wrong. So, three possibilities present themselves:
1. You are correct
2. You have a perceptual bias that makes moderation stick out more to you when it is on unorthodox positions
3. Unorthodox opinions may be correlated with negative tendencies such as lack of factual foundation or inflammatory tone, and are moderated for those reasons
I don't need to. For example, it it possible to cite examples of "bad faith" moderation? There's nothing to cite. It's an ephemeral action. There is no access to who downvoted the comment & why the comment was downvoted.
> You appear to be going on feeling. I'm an intuitive thinker and subject to that myself. When I've collected data, I often realise that I was wrong. So, three possibilities present themselves:
In this case, there is no data to collect. I also check my intuitions with data. I have also told others that they were wrong (period, end of story) only to realize later that they had some great points & were even right.
> You have a perceptual bias that makes moderation stick out more to you when it is on unorthodox positions
I often comment when my position is unorthodox as it's a motivation to express points that have not been expressed in the discussion. I will also add additional information in a reply. I think both tendencies fall within the HN guidelines & contribute to the value of the discussion...whether acknowledged or not.
> I read it, though I don't feel like I've benefited at all.
Not everyone is going to agree with all of your positions. If you only value those who agree with you or somehow contribute to your beliefs, I'm afraid you are handicapped in the pursuit of truth. I find value in your comment & took the effort to respond...This site has a guideline of "intellectual curiosity". Taking a pre-determined closed stance does not really follow that guideline.
> Unorthodox opinions may be correlated with negative tendencies such as lack of factual foundation or inflammatory tone, and are moderated for those reasons
Let's say someone exhibits these negative tendencies. If the moderator must justify the downvote/flag action in the public record, the original author will receive feedback on their lack of factual foundation or inflammatory tone & adjust their posts accordingly. Right now, there is only non-obvious negative feedback...unless someone who downvotes/flags posts a comment explaining the reason, which I observe to be rare.
There is also a double standard. Many orthodox opinions are upvoted without any factual foundation & have an inflammatory tone. I suppose my assertion could be tested with sentiment analysis & score. Are there any open source projects to perform such a test? How could the software developer code what is orthodox or unorthodox? I'm challenged in creating a system as to how to verify the claim with data. Public justification of the downvote/flag would help immensely.
I have to note that this is a weakness of a Positivisist philosophical position. What is easy to quantify is "more real" & what is difficult to quantify is "less real". What is easy to quantify can be cherry-picked to support a pre-conceived position. It's too easy to game the perception of reality. It's too easy to deny the existence of a phenomena when there are no handles to measure the phenomena. Conversely it's also easy to create a conspiracy theory about it. There is no practical way to verify or invalidate the claim in quantifiable terms, so one can only use logical/rational discourse, adopt heuristics, & express subjective perception.
"I don't need examples, you just have to believe that I'm right, trust me!"
Plus you seem to be confusing downvoting for moderation. It is not surprising that strong unorthodox views are downvoted. That's pretty much definitionally what "unorthodox" means, that most people won't like the view.
Tell me how I can cite an example of someone downvoting/flagging a post in "bad faith"? Perhaps I do have an example. My previous post in this thread was downvoted. Who downvoted it? Why was it downvoted? Was it downvoted in good faith? What HN guideline did it violate?
> Plus you seem to be confusing downvoting for moderation. It is not surprising that strong unorthodox views are downvoted. That's pretty much definitionally what "unorthodox" means, that most people won't like the view.
Then it should be added to the HN guidelines. @Dang, please codify "Don't post viewpoints that most people don't want to view" in the HN guidelines. @sanderjd expressed a reason for downvoting unorthodox views & if it's the position of people who downvote/flag posts, then let's make it an explicit rule.
Thank you to @sanderjd & whoever downvoted by previous comment in the thread (possibly also @sanderjd) for providing an example to discuss.
Yeah sorry, but it made me laugh because it was such a let down after reading all this text you and dang have been writing in this thread, and then I get here for this lack of payoff. That kind of dissonance gives me a sardonic humor reaction.
But to try to answer your questions: I think what's weird is that I kind of thought you were complaining about unfair flagging or moderator behavior resulting in comments or posts being removed unfairly. But if you're just complaining about downvoting behavior, well ... honestly that's pretty silly. People can downvote whatever they want. (And isn't it actually explicitly discouraged by the guidelines to complain about this?)
Edit to add (to respond to what I think you added after I first replied):
I guess I don't get what you want here. You have unorthodox views, and seem to foster that and take pride in it. That's great! The world totally does need people with unorthodox views! But you must know that those views will not be popular. That is what the word "unorthodox" means. So I don't get it, what do you want? You want rules enforcing a safe space to express unorthodox views without people disliking them? I'm sorry but that's not possible in a social space. You have to write on a blog with no comments or something if that's what you want.
But I do think people shouldn't downvote just for disagreement with the content. (FWIW, PG and Dang have expressed in the past that they don't agree with me on this, that it's fine to downvote just for disagreement, but I still think it's better not to.) But I think it's fine to downvote for bad faith. And as you've noted, this is totally subjective.
So yep, I downvoted your "I don't have to provide examples" comment (but not any of your others), because I thought it demonstrated that you weren't engaging with dang's many examples in good faith, but were just ranting at him about an unfairness in moderation (again: not just voting) that you've just intuited.
The HN system told me that I am "posting too fast" so this will be my last reply for now...
It's all part of the moderation process. Dang frequently mentions the HN guidelines & he justified his position with:
> nearly everyone with strong passions on a political topic feels like HN is biased against, and even is suppressing, their position
In my experience, downvoting & flagging behavior or negative feedback from @dang doing his moderation job can inflame strong passions & instantiating a covert retaliatory cycle. When someone feels that a viewpoint receives this sort of feedback, one is inclined to ask why? Extrapolating my experience/observations to others, I think transparent justification for moderation would provide feedback as to why, leading to less reply comments asking "why was this downvoted?" or "why was this flagged?". It also disincentivizes bad faith moderation activity.
I'm not complaining about downvoting or moderation per se, but expressing ways to make the HN guidelines more clear, create more fruitful discussions, improve feedback loops, & disincentivizing negative moderation/downvoting/flagging activity.
Edit:
> I guess I don't get what you want here. You have unorthodox views, and seem to foster that and take pride in it. That's great! The world totally does need people with unorthodox views! But you must know that those views will not be popular. That is what the word "unorthodox" means. So I don't get it, what do you want? You want rules enforcing a safe space to express unorthodox views without people disliking them? I'm sorry but that's not possible in a social space. You have to write on a blog with no comments or something if that's what you want.
I agree. All views are subject to criticism. The problem is it's too easy to anonymously knee-jerk a downvote as it often has a negative impact on the "intellectual curiousity" (a stated HN guideline) of the participants of the discussion because it adds the notion of punishment. I have learned to not feel a negative emotion toward downvotes & to incorporate the feedback as some sort of ephemeral HN community sentiment. However, it would be even better feedback to both the original author & the person moderating if the justifications were public.
> But I do think people shouldn't downvote just for disagreement with the content. (FWIW, PG and Dang have expressed in the past that they don't agree with me on this, that it's fine to downvote just for disagreement, but I still think it's better not to.) But I think it's fine to downvote for bad faith. And as you've noted, this is totally subjective.
It is. Which is why making the justification public helps in discerning the downvote feedback. I agree with you that knee-jerk downvoting ought to be discouraged in favor of justified downvoting. Overall, it would make a better, more thoughtful user experience & supports "intellectual curiosity".
> So yep, I downvoted your "I don't have to provide examples" comment (but not any of your others), because I thought it demonstrated that you weren't engaging with dang's many examples in good faith, but were just ranting at him about an unfairness in moderation (again: not just voting) that you've just intuited.
I disagree. Please don't confuse verbosity with a rant. I have to be explicit & thorough about my chain of reasoning.
Rather I have gone in-depth into the issues & repeatedly proposed a simple solution to the issues. I don't have a quantifiable study to point to & I don't think it's even practical to make one without funding & a considerable amount of innovation in software. Public justification of downvoting/flagging activity would help with making such a study. I greatly appreciate @dang for providing his reasoning for his moderation activity. It is very helpful & underappreciated. I think public justification of downvoting/flagging would help him in his job & make his job more rewarding to him.
> When someone feels that a viewpoint receives this sort of feedback, one is inclined to ask why?
But the answer to this "why?" is just super boring: it's because people don't like unorthodox views (that's what makes them unorthodox). It's not an enlightening answer.
> I think public justification of downvoting/flagging would help him in his job & make his job more rewarding to him.
I do think requiring a rationale for a flag is a good idea. I don't think so for a downvote.
The "solution" for downvotes is just to not worry about it so much.
You make many points worth responding to, but I'd like to remark that I can't agree with your contention that there is no feedback about moderation.
Much as it's discouraged, people frequently discuss moderation in hn comments, furthermore I know that lots of people (including ourselves) have engaged with dang privately about this. YMMV, of course, but I've found him nothing but humble and enthusiastic about improving the state of affairs around here. dang and I disagree on several value judgements, but overall I think it's miraculous we have such a good steward of the discussion here.
I appreciate Dang's effort & value him as a person. I think that he is limited in how effective he be can moderating the site's policies. Any single person would be limited. I think making moderation activity publically justified would lift a burden from Dang's shoulders, weed out bad faith moderation, & provide feedback to moderated authors. A win win win.
> I'm motivated to put forth this effort when I think like I can contribute some to the discussion...which often occurs when the trend of the discussion is perceived to possibly be leading down a false or unoptimal path...an unorthodox view.
I have read this sentence four times and I have no idea what it means.
Apologies for the mis-edited, grammatically incorrect, & unclear sentence.
> I have read this sentence four times and I have no idea what it means.
I'm motivated to make an effort to comment when I think I can contribute something to the discussion in accordance to the HN guidelines.
> which often occurs when the trend of the discussion is perceived to possibly be leading down a false or unoptimal path...an unorthodox view
I'm motivated to express views that I perceive to be valid/true/truthful when I have not seen these topics addressed. This means the expressed perspective is often unorthodox, since the orthodox perspective has already been addressed. These expressions are not always unorthodox, but I intuit that they are often more unorthodox than the norm.
My intention is to aid "intellectual curiosity" by expanding the breadth & depth of the discussion.
Do some quick breathing exercises, dang, because if the article is correct about you, that one thing that does enrage you is being mischaracterized or falsely accused, I sense some red haze in your near future induced by the previous commenter. :|
> if the article is correct about you, that one thing that does enrage you is being mischaracterized or falsely accused, [then you’re probably going to get angry]
Notice my statement was a conditional, premised on TFA being correct about something that does really bother him. What’s the relevance? That the previous commenter was doing that very thing TFA mentioned.
As much as I agree with the point dang and Ben made in the article about the importance of patience, and kindness, there does come a point where it’s not worth engaging patiently with someone, because it’s just not worth engaging with them at all. Being worthy of engagement requires some minimal shared sense of good faith. It seemed to me that the previous commenter who decided to set his/her hair on fire and try to curb stomp dang demonstrated a manifest lack of it.
>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
>When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
>Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
I don't know how to break it down further.
>Being worthy of engagement requires some minimal shared sense of good faith.
I agree, but it goes for all of us and insults don't show good faith.
>It seemed to me that the previous commenter who decided to set his/her hair on fire and try to curb stomp dang demonstrated a manifest lack of it.
perhaps, but it's not up to me to determine how/if Dang responds to it. I've seen the alternate route where you remove obviously wrong comments and people cry "censorship" or "thin skinned mod" so there's no truly optimal way to handle it.
“What’s the relevance” was a rhetorical question teeing up the next sentence, not an actual question.
Then, after “answering” the rhetorical question I was prompting myself with, you say, “Insults don't show good faith,” as if that’s a telling point against me (or at least, that seemed to me to be the rhetorical structure of your response at that point). What insult(s) are you referring to, because at that point I was just puzzled.
Finally, you’re not the first one to say “it's not up to me to determine how/if Dang responds to it” in a way I interpret as suggesting I was saying that, so I’ll own that one. But I meant it more in a jokey sense of commiseration at the thankless task he has, given that in almost immediate response to a long-form article going into great depth illustrating his (earnestly attempted) thoughtfulness in moderating came an angry.l accusation (because the commenter disagreed with the substance of some moderation decisions, I guess? The anger in the comment seemed to me to come out of nowhere.)
I'd hope it would seem obvious, but since you admit to be puzzled:
tone is hard to convey on the internet and telling a mod to go outside is one of the most low hanging fruit insults on the internet. Given how much it is said unironically on other platforms I didn't appreciate seeing it here. That's the exact kind of stuff that pushed me off the more popular stuff.
> …telling a mod to go outside is one of the most low hanging fruit insults on the internet.
That’s funny, because that interpretation wasn’t anywhere on my mental horizon. It’s another example of something that has struck me going back to my days as a philosophy double major. Philosophers of language like to play up the power of referentiality and intentionality for communication. What always struck me as more impressive is just how much space there is in any given human communicative act for misunderstanding and how that seems more common, and vastly more undertheorized, than successful communication.
Since there was a snarky(ish??) comment about commenters quoting Socrates, I shall waste no time and jump myself to Aristotle: “Man is by nature a social animal” (Pol. 1253a). But note that that famous translation (“a social animal”) actually translates πολιτικὸν ζῷον (politikon zoon: political animal). Of course, for the ancient Greeks, politics meant something more expansive than it usually does for us. They were right. Politics, like time, is part of the human condition.
I've not gone through to look at other domains specifically, but NYT typically shows up in the top 3--4 sites through 2019, then falls to #7 in 2020, #9 in 2021, and recovers to #5 in 2022.
Interesting. They had a major refactor of their paywall in August 2019. Maybe that turns people off to posting content that isn’t unique to the NYT. Or maybe paywalled articles are less likely to make the HN front page (?).
It'd be interesting to, say, look at a number of sites which have gone paywall and see how that impact on HN front-page posts.
Off the top of my head, some of those would be:
- NYTimes
- WSJ
- Quora
- WaPo
- LA Times
If anyone has a handy list, especially with dates, I'd appreciate it.
Here's the top 40 "general news" sites with barplots by year. I know that NYT, WSJ, WaPo, LA Times, telegraph.co.uk, and possibly a few others have paywalls and may have implemented them over this period. Pastebin to spare readers here another monster text post, expires in a month:
Paywalls certainly seem associated with a few declines (NYT, WaPo), but not others. E.g., NPR and CBC.ca both fell off a cliff in 2022, PBS fell after 2008. None impose paywalls.
Probably it's just a typo, but I'd like to point out that "monetarization" is the process of turns something into a currency, whereas I think you're referring to "monetization" which refers to making something generate revenue(, or to make a painting beautiful by using the wrong colours and lots of blur).
Thanks, not a typo, never occurred to me that the two character sequences are almost as different as the two concepts. I guess I'll invoke "they rarely occur in the same context" as my excuse, and how passive use gets by just fine without looking at the letters all that closely.
You can just not read these stories? Or even hide them?
I wasn't really interested in all those Reddit stories last month either, mostly because they were all exactly the same wankfest. So I just hid them. Problem solved.
As long as the frontpage isn't overrun with these kind of stories every day I don't really see the problem. Even when restricted to purely technical topics – and HN is NOT for purely technical topics – there's will always be heaps of stories you won't be interested in for one reason or the other, and that's fine.
I'd prefer a block function, but the HN community (when searching old topics) seems very against it, and the one block extension I found is Chrome only. But In the meantime I guess I just minimize a topic when that happens.
Also includes some other things like changed styling and whatnot; it's not really "for publication" and some tweaking may be required, but here it is. Load it manually via about:debugging.
You need to load a post by clicking on the date, and then you can click "bozo" or "block": the "bozo" just marks the post as someone being a "bozo" but doesn't block it. This is useful because everyone can have a bad day or whatever, and that's fine. It's people who consistently seem to be having "bad days" that are the problem – unfortunately there's a small group of highly prolific posters that I find consistently unpleasant, and with just ~20-30 people hidden like this (some of whom really ought to be banned IMHO) I found HN becomes a significantly better experience.
The main problem I have with this is that I can no longer flag or rebuff their posts (whichever may apply), so these people become the proverbial "missing stairs" if everyone starts doing it :-/
Oh, this is perfect. Thank you! (On a tangent: replies like these are why I wish we had ways to get notifications for responses. Another paradigm of HN I don't fully agree with but I digress).
I do like the distinguishing factor between marking a commenter and blocking. I don't like (and think it's dangerous) to feel like blocking any old bad commenter over one comment is the go-to option, so having a way to self-warn myself if this is the same user before going nuclear is a nice touch.
>The main problem I have with this is that I can no longer flag or rebuff their posts (whichever may apply), so these people become the proverbial "missing stairs" if everyone starts doing it :-/
True, it is indeed a macro issue. But at the same time I feel it's a micro problem and there's a point where I need to look out for myself as opposed to the site at large. Let sleeping dogs lie, for now.
How did you arrive at "women in tech" as a niche from the parent comment? It doesn't mention this. And I agree, women in tech hasn't been a niche political cause for at least 10-15 years, possibly longer.
> That said, the comments sections on these articles do tend to devolve pretty quickly.
I might be getting desensitized, but (being pretty socially progressive, myself) the comment threads painful to me seem much less frequent today than a few years ago.
(Up until a couple years ago, when a comment thread seemed to bring out comment threads that were very concerning, sometimes I'd go read a little n-gate.com, as an antidote. I'd let that person rant about HN, much more over-the-top than I would. Unfortunately, during their last installment or two, before disappearing, the writer sounded more genuinely upset about something. I hope they're OK, and that they didn't absorb too much stress, while saving me from blowing a gasket.)
> I might be getting desensitized, but (being pretty socially progressive, myself) the comment threads painful to me seem much less frequent today than a few years ago.
I think so as well. But I also think I’ve become better at spotting the emergence of sterile discussions where people just want to push each other’s buttons. I see them coming before they completely devolve, at which point a tap on the [-] button makes reading HN much less draining emotionally. I had to be at peace with the knowledge that I would not read any good post there, though, as I have a kind of completionist mindset and it is unnatural not to read everything.
I just stend to stay clear of certain topics on HN. It's not that I'm not open to different viewpoints on the internet, it's that these comment sections are filled with bad-faith arguing and are just bound to make me angry. If I wanted that, I could just go to Reddit or Twitter.
The bad-faith filter is manifested in the "flag" button.
The problem is that "rational" is taken as the highest good by some people, and a key part of their identities.
Unfortunately these people have mammalian brains, which are a prefrontal cortex sitting on top of an antediluvian limbic system. To pretend that you are rational and not emotional is to launch vigorously down the path of self-deception.
It inevitably follows that one's post-rationalisation becomes both deep-rooted and hidden from one's own view. To roughly paraphrase tfa, you'll cherry-pick facts and apply narrow logic. Worse, you'll be bolstered by the unshakeable conviction that you are completely logical. Then you'll become extremely passionate in defense of your beliefs. The irony...
It is excellent to strive for rationality, just as long as one keeps one's own fallibility in mind. That implies self-knowledge. You can't reach the top of Maslow's pyramid without self-knowledge; we should teach techniques to cultivate it in schools.
You'd be surprise how much of this noise can disappear from blocking maybe, a dozen frequently "passionate" commenters in a community like this. But block features aren't on the table last I checked.
There was an extension¹ posted a few years ago² which implements blocking on the client side. The possible issue is there may be some users who you wish to block in the general case that do add value in other threads, so you would have to weigh up those decisions.
However, it feels like a bad idea to me, if only because it reduces community building and curation a little. Without a mass of users taking action via flagging or reporting on community problems the end result will surely just tend towards submissions and comment threads that are simply garbage, as that is what new users would see as the social norms.
All that said, I wouldn't blame people for using it. There do seem to be a few members of this community that I'd not want to know in real life, and given their comments in some threads they'd not want to know me either ;)
Edit: I see you mentioned an extension in another thread, and this may be the same one. Still, I'll leave this here in case others want to see the links.
I agree that the comment sections on those articles devolves really quickly. To me, those comment sections are the worst part of HN. The normally very civil discourse found in here tends to be more "reddity".
Of course, I don't have a concrete example right now. But I do tend to stay off those topics in here cuase it feels like a shit show. Really makes me sad because the comment sections on other non-tech topics like music or literature are always interesting to read.
far from the worst example, but a pretty recent one to show a bit of how bad it can get. I guess I was still (naively) surprised that affirmative action is still such a hot button topic.
That is a spectacular bad faith reading of what was actually said. They just tried to explain why birth rated dropped, with no judgements being made one way or the other. They absolutely did not claim that "women’s purpose is to keep them high".
They even clarified that in a follow-up: "I think you misinterpreted my words: it's fantastic that humans (both men and women) have more options, if they choose to have less kids that's noone's business but their own."
> Empowerment of women made "get married and out of your parents house" a less interesting option…Having children is just another bucket list item these days.
It’s a slimy comment blaming women’s opportunities for declining birth rates. How you expect anyone to read that in good faith, I have no clue.
Trying to explain something ("A led to B") is not blaming. And again, the poster followed up clarifying that.
Constantly taking the worst possible interpretation of everything and divining the worst possible malicious motivations at the drop of a hat is one of the main reasons these debates turn in to such drek all the time.
An explanation is atonal and objective, the comment said “Having children is just another bucket list item these days.” which pretty obviously implies they don’t think well of the situation.
There is some blaming here, and not just on “cultural shifts” and “expectations”, but also “women’s empowerment”.
And it’s not like the things they mention are things men weren’t doing before that are allowed by modernity. Men travelled all the time (ex: war), while women were expected to stay home. Men’s virginity wasn’t prized, it was to women that having accepted premarital sex was new. Women being able to prioritize their careers was new.
As the bigotry goes on HN this comment is pretty tame, but civility doesn’t excuse ignorance, in fact it makes it more dangerous.
I started submitting articles about brazilian politics to HN after I read a really nice thread about hiring in South America. Some of them have been flagged and still generated discussion somehow. I've learned to accept it. If they get deleted, I won't force the issue.
It's true that political discussion tends to devolve quickly. This is especially true for a fifty-fifty polarized country like Brazil. I'm still glad this community has been relatively tolerant. I almost always enjoy the conversations I have here, even when I do not agree.
A lot of articles do match the very first thing in the guideline's list of what's off topic:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Specifically, there is this tendency to briefly discuss some new social issue, but then filling the rest of the article with discussion of the current political situation.
You don't appear to have read what I wrote very carefully. The problem is that they fill most of the article with a general discussion of politics, making the article mostly about general politics.
People are naturally going to flag such an article.
That's true. And there's the additional factor that the more familiar a topic is, the more likely the thread is to fill up with generic comments about it. That's what the HN guidelines call generic tangents: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Those are probably the most repetitive kinds of thread, and therefore the least valuable.
This phenomenon shows up in most political threads but also in threads that aren't particularly political. The more generic topics have so much mass that they act like black holes that suck in all the interesting discussion (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
>unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
And that's where we will never truly agree until the topic runs super sour. Which can take months.
> there is this tendency to briefly discuss some new social issue, but then filling the rest of the article with discussion of the current political situation.
it makes sense for multiple reasons, no? You never want to assume the general audience is caught up on every little piece of an evolving story, be it a simple celebrity drama or some complex political issue. It's news, not a research paper.
The implications here are interesting -- that discussing with emotion is something to avoid or that it's even possible to avoid at all. We're human -- as much as doing so has been a cultural aspiration for millenia in the West, it is simply not possible to decouple ourselves from our physical and emotional experiences.
In my mind, it's far less important that we try to address these topics "without emotion" (whatever that means) and instead focus on cultivating respect and curiosity and assuming good faith. This is a bit more congruous with the spirit of the site.
There's another Western cultural aspiration involving an impossible decoupling, probably more common in American culture than European, which is to depersonalize politics. But politics is about people, and some people are much less immediately affected by political and social issues than others -- there's usually a great many layers of indirection between the articulation of a regressive point of view or support for a particular law or politician, and e.g. a minority being squished out of tech or a parent who was a victim of a hate crime or a queer person's suicide. There are probably especially many layers of indirection when it comes to a lot of tech workers, given the demographics.
In any case, when discussing politics and issues of class and race it's important to recognize that you're not talking about something abstract, but people, and their loved ones and families. Given that, it's hardly a level playing field if we start with the expectation that folks will leave emotion at the door
"Discussing with emotion" is an euphemism for "saying things that you would not normally say unless you were thrown off kilter by your reaction to what you had just read."
I think it's more of an admission that internet discussions aren't analogous to in-person discussions, and have a way of dehumanizing the person you're discussing with. Combined with modern-day tribalism, it means that most online "discussions" on a particular set of topics are more about virtue signaling and displaying tribal membership than they are about convincing others. As such, it's not unreasonable shorthand for a forum to avoid such topics en masse, as when allowed, they tend to drown out everything else.
The emotions that most commonly arise when discussing politics online are negative ones: anger, resentment, powerlessness.
If you act out on the anger or resentment, no one wins anything. At that moment, it's a good idea to make an effort to argue from a purely logical standpoint instead of just insulting the person you're arguing with. I think that's what most people mean when they say they want to discuss "without emotion".
I find the topics that are most likely to generate "heated" discussion tend to be emotional topics, but also they're more broadly important to society and just more interesting to discuss. That's why I tend to browse in /active[1]. Some JSON parsing command line toolkit re-written in Rust [4 comments]? Yawn..
>Some JSON parsing command line toolkit re-written in Rust [4 comments]? Yawn..
I imagine people come here preceisly because they are that niche that wants to deep dive into those specific technical topics. I wouldn't be surprised if a topic like that could get 100 comments here and barely get a dozen comments on reddit/4chan/etc.
current active example:
>List of APIs that require declared reasons (developer.apple.com)
> 144 points by todsacerdoti 21 hours ago | flag | 309 comments
The general topic is interesing, but the actual link and "literature" is well... a technical document for IOS developers.
While I respect your opinion, I can tell you for a certainty that you are wrong in your specific claim — I can cite myself as a counterexample (:
For instance, recently there was an interesting article about finishing projects[1], which emphasized the emotional journey involved, and I rather liked the discussion it generated.
People have core values. For some people, caring about others is a core value. I see people suffering: I experience emotion about it. I do not feel one bit ashamed to admit that.
Your comment has a whiff of cruelty. It makes me sad that there are people who enjoy cruelty. Most humans find cruelty repulsive. If you don't believe me, try posting yourself kicking a cat under your real name. See what it does for your social status.
I'm jobless, sitting on a pile of cash, enjoying a sabbatical. I'll probably get another job in my lifetime, but on the other hand I might not. Judge away.
I am secure: that's obvious to other people. I was trying to be kind to you, but I have my limits.
To put it in psychopath terms: I've retired early but you're still working, so I have higher status than you. I'm dressing you down in public, so you have lost face.
If you fail to develop empathy, you're always going to have conversations like this, and sometimes you're going to be the one who is bullied. Tiny violin.
I don’t know where you got that view, but I suspect that is very far from the truth. People just tend to speak easily about issue they feel are important. You don’t need to be jobless to write a wall of text, just to have 10 minutes to kill for one reason or another.
>If you are emotionally invested in a topic then it's probably not technical
you really haven't seen what tech nerds will argue over, have you? There can still be surprising vigor over languages, or over features within a language.
performance improvement plan: management will create this for someone not doing well at their job, often as a way of documenting poor performance before the employee is ultimately fired
I take it you haven't seen how emotional people here get talking about javascript or systemd or any number of other pedantic fence-painting "technical" subjects.
I thought things had improved regarding systemd. Now I go to Phoronix when I want to have some fun watching true zealots (on that subject) in their natural habitat. Which is entertaining for about 10 minutes every once in a while.
There's substantial levels of denialism of there being any problem. It's odd to see both deflection, and abuse, where both systematically point to the underlying experiences validating the problems exist, and both attempting to "deny" it.
As an old hand in ICT it wasn't always like this. Something happened (in my opinion) between about 84 and 94 which systematically eroded and undermined women's experience in ICT.
I'd say it was gamer/pc culture but it's beyond that, although it's tied up in it. The conference cycles and tradeshows also played a role. Booth babes played a part, trivialising women's roles in public.
Several dozen highly significant design, analysis and operational roles in the internet vested in women back "then". People sometimes forget that. Women have always been a part of systems, networks, code. Always.
The reasons speculated are much more boring, though. The personal computer was treated no differently than a Nintendo console, AKA a toy. So they (big coporate) simply decided boys were easier to market the home PC to (remember, this was decades before the general public took games seriously. People legitmately thought video games were a fad to die out of)
And that stuck. Snowballs into a time where the "nerd" stereotype more or less became the perogative term in the 80's/90's as a quick framing for some undesirable male. Every single piece of media had some stereotype of it, well into the 00's. It's not surprising women were put off. Men were put off too.
No particular mastermind here. Just corporate wanting to make a quick buck off of kids. Those kids just happened to pioneer an entire industry while Hollywood laughed at them.
It's that the profession acquired status and $$. Mid-90s into the .com boom transformed it from a nerdy but niche profession/obsession into one with status.
Anytime that happens, the gatekeepers start to dominate.
That's my guess, anyways. I got into this work for pay in the mid-90s, not earlier, so I'll take your word for it that there was a time when women were more prominent.
In the latter half of the '80s, MIT changed their admission criteria to get a larger percentage of women undergraduates in incoming classes. This cohort did not have the same level of "STEM advanced placement" prep classes as before and the grind/pace/atmosphere of the freshman filter classes changed; many faculty were not happy about it, as I was told by female students from that time period. I don't doubt that similar changes took place elsewhere.
I'm not saying this was not an improvement, simply that it meshes with your timeline and sheds a different specturm of light on what you are pointing out. (to put it another way, there were traditionally many fewer women who wore pocket protectors and carried sliderules, but yes they were very much a part of the community)
Most people aren't denying anything. They are rightfully pointing out there's a vocal minority trying to overcorrect things and write history in a way that wasn't the case.
Most people don't think women are incapable. In fact, they think women are far more capable and autonomous than the average commenter gives them credit for. That's why they willingly choose not to go into IT-related fields or tend to pick things adjacent to it, despite all of the things being done to pull them in. Let alone the fact many are willingly selling their bodies both as eye candy and physically, often without a mediator in between, despite a more stable and on average more lucrative job available to them. At the very least, many of them realized back then sleeping at your office working for peanuts to work on your dream project under supervision of some corporate bigwig wasn't nearly as great as whatever their other options were back in the day.
And god forbid we point out the elephant in the room: most people, women or men, aren't looking forward to working in an industry consisting primarily of the other sex. You take any profession and it will be an uphill battle starting from the cradle all the way to the grave. People acting surprised this hasn't changed immensely in 30 years are underselling the difficulty of solving the problem given all the other options available to any individual person today.
Opinions and views likely follow statical patterns like everything else.
Systemic reasons are why it's common to see the collective responsible for the systemic patterns in society be so fervent to deny systemic issues exist.
I myself like the idea of my success being attributed to my hard work. I would like to think that I bootstrapped my way to success. It's not an easy feeling to accept that in many ways by virtue of just being part of the main majority collective I by default have an advantage in my community over those that aren't a member in that majority collective group.
i.e. if the majority % of users in a forum are belonging to a certain category then it's reasonable to believe that most of that majority would be against anything perceived as a criticism of their group (and by extension themselves).
There's not a lack of these sorts of discussions on the internet by males or tech people or white people or whatever. Just go on Reddit or Twitter it's everywhere.
American's love talking about those issues. It's probably the biggest thing they love talking about compared to most other countries.
Hacker News would be immeasurably improved by removing the flag button entirely. That’s what the downvote button is for. Flag should be a message to a mod if there is something heinous like gore on the front page. It’s used as a censorship button here and that isn’t cool, especially in a place that is supposed to support well rounded discussion.
I disagree, the flag button is very valuable, especially whenever any other social media goes through some exodus and we get a bunch of new transient users who don't really care about the culture here.
For example, since the reddit exodus, I feel like we've had an uptick in "drive-by" comments (characteristic of reddit) where people just throw in some sort of unproductive, sometimes provocative comment with no intent of engaging.
Flagging is a nice way to clean up trash like that without having to pull in a moderator.
That supposes that the only criteria for what should or shouldn't be promoted to HN users is the vote count. But HN has never worked that way, and never could; if it did, the front page would be all cat pictures.
Given that some of the most influential tech people on the planet frequent HN (see Matt Cutts, etc.), I think it's critically important to discuss topics that are related simply to making the world a better place. Tech and tech people can help , but not if we can't even have the conversations.
If the richest and most influential people in tech are not even permitted to have these conversations, the chances of them getting fixed drops dramatically.
It feels like YCombinator wants to just keep shoving heads into sand on many, many topics because they're making money, and making money is the goal.
you can't downvote a submission, so that's already one issue.
>lag should be a message to a mod if there is something heinous like gore on the front page. It’s used as a censorship button here and that isn’t cool
I mostly agree and that is how I use flag. I've never flagged a submnission, personally unless I felt the site was outright malware (I haven't experienced that here).
But I figure in this case flagging isn't too dissimilar to how reddit will hide submissions/comments with enough downvotes.
The snipers that hit you prove you wrong: you may have looked for discussion, you received passing sneers: flagging is probably not the critical issue.
Yep this happened with my last 3 flagged submissions. All on social issues. Really sad because especially first one listed below I thought would elicit good discussions, somewhat tied other issues like affirmative action.
I'd say https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35867458 was an interesting submission that probably shouldn't have been flagged, although it's doubtful whether a thoughtful, curious discussion is possible. Usually we end up with people charging in and wielding their priors as a stick, and from that point of view I can understand the flags.
Your thinking on these and other posts is narrow minded and totally subservient to the richest people in Silicon Valley, starting with the people who own this site. You also have the temerity to go outside HN and tell people to rewrite posts on other sites - a corrosive form of censorship. Your reply here is a great example of why you are a poor moderator. I wish you would quit.
> You also have the temerity to go outside HN and tell people to rewrite posts on other sites - a corrosive form of censorship
I don't understand what you're referring to. Can you explain further?
Edit: oh, I see - you're talking about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35719273. Yes, sometimes when startups ask me for help, I make suggestions about how they can change their articles to better appeal to HN readers, or to avoid pitfalls. For example, mentioning one's startup only at the end of an otherwise interesting article (which I guess people do because marketers told them it was a "call to action", or something?) makes many HN readers feel like the whole article was a bait-and-switch, and then they rush into comments to complain that the article is "just an ad" or whatnot. That's what happened in that thread - e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35718172 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35718321. In such cases I advise authors to mention their startup right at the beginning - an easy fix. I don't think most people would call that censorship! - certainly the authors who take the advice do so freely and say they're grateful for it.
I can't help but wonder if there's something else to your complaint because it's hard for me to understand why that would be objectionable. If you want to explain more I'd be interested...
Btw re "the richest people in SV" - the startup in that case wasn't SV related as far as I know, and certainly not YC related; I believe it's a spinoff from Andy Pavlo's research group at CMU. I wasn't helping them for any reason other than to make the HN thread more interesting and because they emailed to ask.
Hey, that's not fair! HN is for everyone's pet topics and non-technical stories are welcome. The only criterion is that they be interesting and gratify curiosity.
Even if you're right, this is an unprofitable direction for an HN thread to go in. We want curious conversation here, so we have to minimize ideological battle because the two are basically incompatible - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679 for a long past explanation about this.
not op, but a wild guess is i think they're attempting an "oh you know the ones", aka the ones trying for a more equitable society, which the status quo equates with "they're trying to destroy the status quo!"
Some people want to be able to comment freely without the zealots of the New Church of Diversity trying to get them fired.
Some people will use HN for job postings. I would certainly expect that anyone with two brain cells to rub together uses a throwaway account for anything but the most boring opinions about C++ proposals. All it takes is a single throwaway sentence 7 years ago that pisses off the Church, and you could end up not getting hired.
You can turn on 'showdead' in your profile to see everything that has been killed by moderators, software, or user flags.
Just be aware that if you do that, you're signing up to see the worst of what the internet has to offer HN—alongside a lot of other stuff that isn't as bad. We never delete things outright, unless the author asks us to, so that setting is basically x-ray glasses into everything.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10877423 (Jan 2016 - maybe before we figured out how to treat the dreaded title fever, which drives men mad like mosquitoes in the old northwest)
HN is one of the few communities where I've had scenarios where I've gotten into a spirited discussion, been gently told to cool off (or gotten a temporary rate limit), taken a step back and realized, you know what? I was not interacting in the spirit of the community.
Of course, the community is no more immune than any other regarding group think or rough edges. But on the whole, I've found the level of discourse to impressively high quality over time, and I've been posting and reading here on one account or another for over a decade. It's not just the level of discourse that is impressive, but its prolonged longevity. I think it can only have occurred from a very thoughtful approach to moderation; something I immediately miss when I step into other less curated forums such as Reddit and Twitter, where I can find the interesting content in the discourse, but laden with significantly more noise and significantly less thoughtfulness.
Agreed. But this isn’t just the top-down moderation, no matter how much of demi-god dang is.
My experience is that HN users “moderate” each other, when appropriate, to some degree. I’ve told others they’re over the line and I’ve been told myself, in a respectful manner. This tends to suppress fires early before they become flame wars.
So I think while dang does excellent work, the fact that it’s transparent and most respect that, people voluntarily self-align and help out. Otoh, in places where mods are assholes or automated, people don’t care about the spirit of the rules at all.
dang's biggest contribution is setting the example. You can see it in this very submission—his reactions to pretty severe criticism in the subthread above are universally calm and measured, even when the other party gets quite aggressive. And he's also quick to talk down people who think they're defending him and/or HN but are doing so in an aggressive way.
He's the same way when he's moderating, and I've definitely patterned my own pseudo-moderating comments after what I've seen him do.
I think people are able to moderate themselves because dang is enforcing a tone. you pick up the HN tone over here. and that tone puts the necessary boundaries to have a meaningful discussion.
for example I find the requests for proofs quite funny over here. it's never "source?", there's always a couple of words added to them to adjust the tone. most of the time there's no answer, but sometimes there's is a delightful come back with well researched sources, demonstrating the champion was well prepared and the challenger had been trapped :)
> I think it can only have occurred from a very thoughtful approach to moderation
I agree. I don't think I've ever seen a reply from dang that I didn't agree with. I agreed with him even in the times he replied to me. I'm not sure if I succeeded in taking the advice to heart but I did listen and try.
well, there's 2 forms of disagreement. I never felt like I was off put by any of dang's comments that I read. AKA a disagreement of tone (in the words of The Big Lebowski: "You're not wrong, Walter. You're an asshole!). He feels professional and won't devolve into flaming like other mods on other sites. He makes his points and lets his sourcing and historical knowledge talk instead of insults or appeals to authority.
Of course there's plenty of times where I disagree philosophically, and that's fine. At the end of the day I'll never fully agree with any one person. I just simply don't want to be called any number of insults you'd hear elsewhere if you dare not tow the line perfectly.
> I agreed with him even in the times he replied to me.
I am just reacting to that bit because I think it is important (though I agree about the rest). This is a place where a reply is not a counterpoint by default, and where people can have a discussion even if they partially agree, stupid as it sounds. I realised this a while ago, reading someone who was confused that a reply they got was not an argument against them or what they were saying, but instead just someone chipping in their perspective, which was neither contradiction nor approval. Most of online discussions are very adversarial or mindless piling on.
Usually, when you see dang replying to someone, he's reminding them of the HN guidelines and very gently and patiently explaining that they're violating said guidelines. The implication I tried to make was that I had violated the guidelines at least once, dang had replied to me and I had agreed with him that I was in the wrong.
I don't disagree with your observation though. I have developed this habit of explicitly saying "I agree" before elaborating to defend against such misinterpretations of intent.
> HN is one of the few communities where I've had scenarios where I've gotten into a spirited discussion, been gently told to cool off (or gotten a temporary rate limit), taken a step back and realized, you know what? I was not interacting in the spirit of the community.
Not the spirit of the 'community', the spirit of the company. The community didn't set the guidelines. The company did. It's a private company so it's their right. Also, what you experienced is a form of social/behaviorial engineering. It's what happens in cults, when the leader admonishes a follower for hurting the group, collective or community by breaking the group's rules. Of course the group doesn't make any rules, the leader does. The stubborn or independent minded tend to fight against leader and get banned. But most people are docile, blame themselves and rejoin the cult becoming even more fanatic than the leader.
> Thanks dang!
They even come to love the dear leader.
> something I immediately miss when I step into other less curated forums such as Reddit and Twitter
It isn't less curated. It's even more curated using the same dark arts and patterns of social engineering. It's just that reddit and twitter have many more users. If this 'community' grew to the size of reddit and twitter, it would be a much different place.
Edit: If you ever wonder if social engineering works, read the comments in this post. Nothing 'hacker' about it.
> Not the spirit of the 'community', the spirit of the company.
The spirit of the company aligns with most people's basic ethics and morality. When that's the case, having an exemplary moderator just reemphasizes the basic ethics that most people already believe: "I should treat others with respect, and attribute any unintended harm with ignorance rather than malice". Sure, we don't all believe that. But most people think that at the very minimum, it's good to treat other people well.
The difference with a cult is apparent looking at the definition. Google gives me this:
* a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.
* a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.
You could argue there's a weird veneration of dang, which I do find kind of odd, but most people wouldn't consider "treat others with respect" as strange or sinister.
> You could argue there's a weird veneration of dang, which I do find kind of odd,
I’ve managed a (small) community myself, back in the day. Dang is no superhuman, but managing the cats’ bag HN is, with so few terrible events and so many interesting discussions is impressive. The community is more or less self-selected; you have to be in circles where HN is known, and you have to appreciate a text-only website with only links and opinionated discussions. Still, the fact that it works at all is great, and this is due in no small part to the moderation (not only dang, but he’s the most visible). From that perspective, some degree of admiration is not surprising or odd.
> The spirit of the company aligns with most people's basic ethics and morality.
Even if it did, the guidelines are still company guidelines not community guidelines. That was my point. Calling it community guidelines is a form of social engineering to appeal to many people's natural desire to conform.
> The difference with a cult is apparent looking at the definition. Google gives me this:
I didn't say hn is a cult. I was just pointing out the common tools of manipulation used by both cults and social media sites like twitter, like reddit, like hn.
> You could argue there's a weird veneration of dang, which I do find kind of odd, but most people wouldn't consider "treat others with respect" as strange or sinister.
You are building a straw man. Where did I ever even mention anything about 'treat other's with respect'. You are attributing to me an argument I didn't make. And are hammering at it. I made no assertion about any specific guideline. I didn't say whether they were good or bad. I even went out of my way to say the company has a right to set whatever guideline they want. I was just pointing out the social engineering aspect to it. Whether the guidelines says be 'mean to others' or 'be kind to others' is meaningless to my argument as it is about social engineering. Hope that cleared up the confusion.
I think once a year is probably about right for a meta fest. Kind of like how carnivals are annual.
There are 29 other things on the front page! If you want to complain about repetition, there are two Roman history articles on the front page right now. That's a lot. (Edit: never mind, one got cut - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36914993.)
Is there a point at which the mods' work can be done by a large language model?
Not because it's any cheaper or anything, just because after many years of doing this eventually it must start to feel stale and there's a burnout risk. Imagine if you leave almost all the work to automation and check in much less frequently. So much time for any other activities.
I sure wish work life worked like that. Instead they say "why are we paying you? Nothing is broken", and coincidentally stuff breaks weeks after being let go.
I understand it for non-technical companies (even if by now, decades later, they should treat IT like they treat insurance... sigh), but it's baffling for a tech focused company to treat engineers like that.
I especially love Dan aggregating previous discussions on <topic>. Equally appreciate the other users that do the same. It’s nice to go and check out how perceptions have changed (if it’s a thing with longer time horizon) or just additional discourse
Well, I for one think it's a pretty good testament to this site that though I have a feeling you are referring to politics, I don't know whether you lean left or right, just that you probably lean a bit more than most.
I agree, the fact that I haven't noticed significant moderation on HN is a sign of really good work by that team. Also, it's a sign of a community, while not perfect, is at least trying to be a community.
I would like to read the moderators take on getting through the pandemic on HN. The toxicity here hit new highs for me during that period. God help you if even dared to muse that you may consider thinking about lockdowns as maybe not the perfect answer. Further, even whispering "lab-leak" is still a crime although not as punished as it once was.
Even through that period though i will say HN is the best large-scale forum i've ever found.
"I wondered if their work might show that tech really does need humanism—that better online communities can be built one relationship at a time. Then my eyes moved down the thread, where a third user had left a new comment. It read: “King Canute was supposed to stop the tide, you couch alluder.”
Great article, very well researched. Ms Weiner has clearly put some major effort in there ... or spends an inordinate amount of time here anyway! Is HN on speed dial in her browser.
The article is pre-pandemic and a lot of other recent events. I'd love to diff the older article with one written nowadays, ideally with minimal knowledge of the original.
She did do a ton of research, worked through all the materials we sent her (I sent a lot, including a thwack of Kids in the Hall videos, several years-long email threads with specific users, with their permission of course, and god knows what else), and even changed her mind—a thing rare enough to always deserve respect. We took a risk in trusting her; I felt like it worked out, and I'm glad we chose to be open. The article came out fairer than we probably had any grounds to expect. There were bits I could complain about, but that's inevitable. I felt seen and I think Scott did too.
Re Canute, she missed that pvg was being playful, in the context of a longstanding positive connection. I felt bad when I saw that. But we did get an amusing, and properly italicized, About box out of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pvg.
Forums, like music, love and friendship, die when the participants become meta about them, I think. Criticism is what we have when we aren't giving or participating, and while it opens conversations to people who don't have a stake in them, it also invites self centeredness and abuses for other agendas. Everything is better when we stop being meta.
What I've noticed about forums is that meta discussions tend to be most prevalent when they're brand new (see for example: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363>), or when there's a major disruption in their operation or management (e.g., Birdsite, presently).
Otherwise ... there's sort of a constant drizzle of mild disappointments and/or outrages, often over moderation, content (posts or commentary) that's objectionable to some faction, and various interfactional skirmishes. HN sees the latter, but even that doesn't seem show much of a long-term trend that I can see. "General news" submissions (by site) have been a major part of front-page submissions from the beginning. Blogs have fallen somewhat, though software projects (identified by GitHub / GitLab URLs) are an increasingly large fraction of posts.
HN has been remarkably even-keeled over the years, without tipping over either into schlerosis, homogeneity, or mass dysfunction, as seems typical of many other online forums I've participated since the late 1980s. I've been looking at various aspects of that through an archive of all front pages from 2007 until a few weeks back (I refresh occasionally, though a few weeks doesn't shift findings much).
> love and friendship, die when the participants become meta about them
I am wondering how you make love "meta" in this example. Is it like a sitcom where they start pointing out each other's mistakes passive aggressively?
But personally I don't fully agree. "meta" is simply another tool, and like any tool you need to know where and how to use it for the best effect. I'd say it's more like comedy: you need to consider the context to really nail it, and sometimes it simply isn't the right time to use the tool.
But the agreeing part here is the general sentiment that people love to run a certain tool to the ground when it becomes trendy. See it all the time in media. trends come and go because companies treat these tools as gold rushes rather than ways to properly convey a message. Flanderization, in a nutshell.
If we could get Ducksauce or the Kiffness to produce a song with a sample of everything is better when we stop being meta, we might just be able to save the world. :)
I feel, as someone who has observed and participated in HN for years, that the moderation doesn't do much good. I mean, I'm sure that HN would be worse if there was no moderation, but there's simply not enough moderation to go around. One or two people can't handle the sheer volume of, well, shit on here. There's a lot of shit. The HN guidelines are violated multiple times in practically every comment thread.
I find myself becoming my worst self on here, whether I want to or not, in reaction to others being their worst selves too. It's difficult to rise above the fray. Dang must have infinite patience, but I don't, and most people don't seem to either. Dang sets an example that few are willing to follow. I also feel that he gives people way too much lenience. It's like, "I see you've violated the guidelines badly multiple times lately. That's not cool. If you don't stop, then I might have to ban you, someday in the future, or maybe not. I'll give you one... hundred more chances." I'm exaggerating here, but only slightly. ;-)
I know that some commenters think that HN is great place for intelligent, friendly discussion. I personally don't understand that. It's like we live in different worlds. But I'm certainly not alone in seeing HN as "toxic", something mentioned in the linked article, as well as by people I know elsewhere. I come here for the topics, which are often very interesting to me, yet all too often I come away from HN regretting my participation. Maybe this is just a bad habit that needs breaking. :-)
> I find myself becoming my worst self on here, whether I want to or not, in reaction to others being their worst selves too. It's difficult to rise above the fray.
This is one of the few sites that lets you say what you want to say and not think about it further. If I see something worthy of a response that might turn heated, I add my comment and don't return to the discussion. Other sites use notifications that force you to read responses to your comments.
Cuturally, for me, losing my cool is a sign that you've been beaten. I do my best to stay in control all the time - though there are inevitably times that what I'm trying to say doesn't translate into what I type.
People like to pretend that prolonged back-and-forth discussions are valuable. But at least in my experience most people, especially me, only have one or two points to bring to the table. After that the discussion quickly devolves into nitpicking or bickering.
> This is one of the few sites that lets you say what you want to say and not think about it further.
Not sure if you'll be back to see this, but... how does this approach to comments align with the ideal of intellectual curiosity that HN is supposed to foster?
Although HN comments can often be — if I may put it metaphorically — hit and run, like a graffiti wall, is that the ideal?
Maybe it is the ideal, and I'm missing the point. :-)
> I find myself becoming my worst self on here, whether I want to or not, in reaction to others being their worst selves too. It's difficult to rise above the fray. Dang must have infinite patience, but I don't, and most people don't seem to either.
Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about. For what it’s worth, after a couple of those stern warnings from Dan I’ve started to just flag and move on when other people are getting shitty. The collapse-entire-thread button is handy too: as soon as I notice someone has started a tedious, tangential political argument I can make the whole thing disappear!
The comment-collapse and post-hide features are underappreciated.
I also get dragged into discussions I find ... less than productive (happened earlier today). Much as I'm consciously aware of these and try not to get into them, there are times when both it's not clear that you have entered into the Fire Swamp until you're well and truly mired in it, and speaking for myself there's quite often a very-difficult-to-shake belief that one can argue or demonstrate one's way out of a situation.
Though often I do find some success in collapsing a thread once it's clear, after one or two comments to it, that discussion won't progress.
As for moderation, if you do see egregious misconduct, EMAIL THE MODS. They really do read mail, and they do engage.
Most of my own emails are over other issues: titles, preferable URLs, and nominations for the 2nd chance queue. But I'll occasionally point out badly-behaving accounts, and have heard back on those virtually always.
Dang does give a lot of 2nd chances, especially for well-established accounts. New/green profiles starting off badly, or known sockpuppets, get far more summary justice.
> it's not clear that you have entered into the Fire Swamp until you're well and truly mired in it
Yes, exactly!
> As for moderation, if you do see egregious misconduct, EMAIL THE MODS. They really do read mail, and they do engage.
Well, I'd rather not become an unpaid moderator myself. This is why I said that there's not enough moderation to go around.
Another problem with emailing the mods, related to your first quote, is that once you're well and truly mired in the Fire Swamp, your own hands are not clean anymore, and you've probably violated the HN guidelines yourself to some extent. Condescending repliers often bring you down to their level.
I very rarely email mods concerning my own interactions with others, largely on the basis of what you've said here.
But I will do it where I see egregious misconduct in others' threads.
As for unpaid moderation ... I've various reasons for misgivings about HN (as I do about virtually all of the Internet these days), but the site's given me value, seems to spill out positive externalities all over the place, and, well, is reasonably well moderated, all told. It's certainly not turned to shit as so much else has, even if it does frequently disappoint in other regards.
But when it's good, it is in fact pretty darned good.
> I find myself becoming my worst self on here, whether I want to or not, in reaction to others being their worst selves too. It's difficult to rise above the fray.
You always have a choice. If you display your worst self on here, you choose to do so. You can opt not to engage with comments that are a negative to the community.
> You always have a choice. If you display your worst self on here, you choose to do so. You can opt not to engage with comments that are a negative to the community.
Sigh. I would respectfully ask you to perform some self-reflection about this very reply of yours. I was admitting to a common, natural, human fallibility, and you chose to reply in a way that seemed blameful and condescending.
"You always have a choice" is a cliché here in the HN comments. It's not an interesting response.
To be fair, if you thought the parent's response was negative or not up to community standards, you could indeed have just ignored it. You can do the same for this comment. It's a great habit to develop.
Yes, this thread painfully exhibits why I said, "all too often I come away from HN regretting my participation."
Neither Infinitesimus nor soulofmischief seemed to consider applying the principle "You can opt not to engage" to their own choices and replies, and I feel that the latter's reply was even worse, because it came after I already suggested self-reflection to the former.
> Neither Infinitesimus nor soulofmischief seemed to consider applying the principle "You can opt not to engage" to their own choices and replies
The key difference is that I don't have a problem engaging, whereas you stated you have a problem engaging, and so I offered a second opinion.
It sounds like you didn't want people to engage your comment at all. I frequently opt not to engage when I feel like it, but I'm not restricted to only engaging with comments of which you approve. If you don't want replies, the best option might be just not to post.
Any perceived tone in my earlier response was just that: perceived. I was not being condescending, I was making a valid point and offering an opinion. It's your choice to interpret it as negative. From my perspective you are being unnecessarily negative towards me. If this thread bothers you then just move on.
> I was making a valid point and offering an opinion.
An opinion about what? The problem is that it was an opinion about me.
Criticize ideas all you want, but getting personal and criticizing other commenters is not something that should be happening here at all. "You had a choice" is not a productive or desirable line of conversation. Even if I open up and offer an insight into my personal feelings about myself and my own experience, as I did in my original comment, that's not an open invitation to be a target for personal criticism.
> It's your choice to interpret it as negative.
This is just more of the same "You had a choice" handwaving. How about taking some responsibility for your own words and replies and how they might be perceived by others? That's how conversation works. "I can't control how other people perceive my words" is a gross falsehood. Ask professional writers about that. Of course you have a great deal of control over it. You had a choice too.
You are reading into this really negatively. I said nothing judgemental toward you in my reply and only mentioned that you don't always have to respond. I have no wish to argue with you in a state like this. I'm going to leave this conversation before it becomes any more negative. Have at it.
People do read comments and criticisms about themselves strongly negatively.
This is particularly the case where there seems to be an existing communications failure --- talking cross-purposes, not being heard/seen, failure to acknowledge points or caveats, uncharitable constructions, and the like.
The knack of delivering criticism without aggravation or raising hackles is a true skill. It's one dang's developed well, though he's not always successful. Part of his toolkit is having a set of standard responses to situations which have been honed over time. I'll often link to his own admonitions, though even that doesn't always work, see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36890303>.
I give an honest effort, then try as best I can to roll with it.
On some platforms it's possible to mute or block profiles, and I find that that's a tremendously useful capability. (I feature the advice as one of the pinned toots on my Fediverse profile: "Block fuckwits". And acknowledge that, yes, sometimes I'm the fuckwit.)
HN for various reasons doesn't offer this as basic functionality. It does have the option of collapsing threads (the setting is retained until a post is about a week or two old, due to systems limitations of the HN server itself). But at least the annoyance isn't staring you in the face whenever you return to your past threads for that week or so.
Even with technologically-mediated options, the practice goes against fundamental human psychology, which is to defend oneself.
(There's a parallel to this I'd thought of in an earlier response but didn't mention at the time: under US law, there is a legal protection against self-incrimination, but that is instituted insidiously in that in order to invoke it, one must forgo the option of defending oneself in the moment. Legally, to have that option one must have a legal advocate, though that costs money, which many defendants in either criminal or civil cases don't have the wealth to access. In that light, Fifth Amendment protections are something of a cruel joke against psychology.)
> I said nothing judgemental toward you in my reply and only mentioned that you don't always have to respond.
That was judgmental. If you don't realize it, well, then I'm informing you of that fact now.
You don't need to mention what I can/should/have to do. It's completely off topic for HN. Unsolicited life "advice" from internet strangers, which is often veiled criticism — especially an empty tautology like "You always have a choice", as if were discussing philosophical free will — is usually unwelcome, and it's baffling to me how some internet commenters haven't learned this yet, unless they simply don't want to learn it.
I'm well aware of my own choices and ability to choose or not to choose. I don't need to be told by strangers about this, as if it were some revelation. It's not a revelation, and nobody here (or anywhere) needs such replies.
> The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative—often masks a deeper recklessness. Ill-advised citations proliferate; thought experiments abound; humane arguments are dismissed as emotional or irrational. Logic, applied narrowly, is used to justify broad moral positions. The most admired arguments are made with data, but the origins, veracity, and malleability of those data tend to be ancillary concerns. The message-board intellectualism that might once have impressed V.C. observers like Graham has developed into an intellectual style all its own. Hacker News readers who visit the site to learn how engineers and entrepreneurs talk, and what they talk about, can find themselves immersed in conversations that resemble the output of duelling Markov bots trained on libertarian economics blogs, “The Tim Ferriss Show,” and the work of Yuval Noah Harari.
Oh yeah! If they last visited the site six years ago.
In reality the contrarianism also leads to pushback against “libertarian economics blogs, “The Tim Ferriss Show,” and the work of Yuval Noah Harari”, as well as the “hyperrational” style of argumentation, as well as the dullard technologists who don’t want to deal with “politics”.
You will for sure regularly roll your eyes if you dislike the stereotypical HN comments. But you will also see all of them get a healthy amount of pushback.
Topics are seldom an echo-chamber or a display of dueling Markov bots. Not any more.
damn straight! I come here to help deliver such pushback. because otherwise all the budding Sam Altmans here are going to plow through completely unaware that they might not be fully correct at all times or someone might disagree with them. Just like it was eye opening to see Star Trek episodes that revealed some people actually weren't cool with starfleet. "What? someone doesn't like crypto? someone doesn't like AI? mongodb isn't web scale?" all the same riff
This is actually a very good article. It leans a little towards caricature (insofar as it takes the detached perspective on HN of people who seem not to inhabit HN regularly, and so seems more inclined to credit the criticisms), but not nearly as much as I was expecting it to.
This was also a very accurate description:
> Skipping from thread to thread felt a bit like arriving at a party where half the room was sipping non-alcoholic shrubs and the other half had spent the afternoon tailgating in a stadium parking lot.
Reading N-Gate still cracks me up today. But the person behind it was a bit vicious in ascribing to all of HN the motives/aspirations of Y Combinator. His/her description of who inhabits HN seemed much more to the point when directed at YC instead.
> It seems like HN has become more political in just last couple months.
Users have been saying that almost since the beginning, but I think it's mostly just swings and fluctuations. Lots of past examples here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.
I'd be one of those. I've become disenchanted with Reddit, and found Mastodon unsatisfying, so for now I'm mostly here.
This is ... often a strange and uncomfortable place for me to be. I'm geeky, and work in tech, and I tend left wing and have absolutely no interest in finance, and have a deep deep distrust of "tech bros" and startup culture.
I've also found that I have a tendency to come across in online discussions as far more strident and argumentative than I really am, especially when I'm tired. That's something I'm working on.
I try to think of each top-level comment like a sales pitch to get me to respond. If it smells even slightly funny, I pass. The next opportunity is just a 'next' away.
> This is ... often a strange and uncomfortable place for me to be. I'm geeky, and work in tech, and I tend left wing and have absolutely no interest in finance, and have a deep deep distrust of "tech bros" and startup culture.
I can assure you, there’s plenty of you here. They just don’t comment on every subject.
Classifying posts by the submitted site, "general news" has fallen from about 8% to 4% of all front-page stories, from 2009 to 2022.
(2009 selected as the first couple of years of HN were still sorting things out, 2022 as the most recent complete year with data available.)
Submissions specific to programming or software projects have arguably increased though that's in part as they're easier to determine based on github/gitlab URLs.
That's little different from either 2021 or 2023 to date. There is less focus on general news and more on programming-specific domains than in the first three years of Hacker News.
I can give breakdowns on classifications if requested, but basically:
- "programming" is typically a github/gitlab URL or language-specific domain (python.org, golang.org, etc.)
- "blog" is either an identifiable blogging site or a site verified to be a blog.
- "academic / science" is either an edu (or other cc-tld equivalent) domain, or a scientific publication (e.g., nature.com, stanford.edu, u-tokyo.ac.jp)
- "general news" is a general-interest news site, (e.g., nytimes.com, wsj.com, washingtonpost.com)
- "n/a" is a post without a URL, typically an "Ask ...", "Tell ...", "Who's hiring", or related post.
- "corporate comm." is on a corporate domain about that corporation, e.g., apple.com, blog.mozilla.org)
- "general interest" is usually a general-interest magazine, or other general-topic site (e.g., theatlantic.com, newyorker.com, archive.org)
Etc.
I've manually classified 16,185 "sites" (many thankfully by regex), of 52,642 total in the front-page archive, or about 30%, which cover ~= 65% of all HN front-page stories. "UNCLASSIFIED" tends strongly toward blogs and corporate sites based on some sampled selections. All sites with >= 17 front-page posts have been classified.
The actual story topic may not correspond to the site classification. "general news" topics often concern tech-related businesses, technology, products, legislation, regulation, etc., though they may also relate to general news items, of course.
Some time back I sent a "thank you for moderating" note, and about a minute after I hit send it dawned on me that the hn@ inbox was probably also collecting a few "I'm being silenced" mails at around the same time. It was that realisation that made me appreciate the moderators here all the more, as I'd give up about five times a day if faced with the task.
"...whether the site’s original tech-intellectual culture can be responsibly scaled up to make space for a more inclusive, wider-ranging vision of technology."
I don't come to Hacker News for "inclusive" technology - which these days appear to be a politically-correct euphemism for forced diversity.
I come to Hacker News for discussions on technology.
Anything that prioritizes the "inclusive" nature of technology, versus the "technology" itself, is irrelevant to me, and has nothing to do with the main interests of the site (hacking and technology) and should be downvoted. Keep politics and social politics out from Hacker News.
It seems the sense of the words 'inclusive' and 'diverse' in the article is broader than the politics meaning you ascribe to them.
A quote from one of the moderators:
>Intellectual curiosity is everywhere, and it’s present in all demographics,
>We want Hacker News to grow in all demographics, because there’s just intellectually interesting contributions from all of those communities—a greater diversity of content, of conversations, of topics, et cetera.
Which is just another way of stating the guidelines:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
The stuff you don't like is already off-topic, unless there is intellectually interesting discussion to be had.
Including people is not political. People are not being political by being different and wanting to participate. People are not being political for wanting to make technology that works for people who have different needs related to their abilities or identities.
Technology doesn't happen in a vacuum. It is made by people and for people. People who are not all the same.
YOU are being political by pretending that including people is political.
I feel like this might be a little intellectually dishonest. I think we all know that this comment was never about blind people and their screen readers, but the subversive identity politics that are being played in the name of diversity and inclusion.
You're being dishonest by implying that discussion of technology is inherently not inclusive and that an effort needs to be made to be inclusive by allowing people who feel oppressed (whether they are or are not) to play in the "oppression olympics" by creating tangential opinionated discussions regarding policy or ethical guidelines that have nothing to do with the technology or the problem the technology is trying to solve.
Technology is inherently apolitical and inclusive. Anyone who claims otherwise is just trying to stir up useless internet flame wars. If you want to uselessly rant about politics on the internet you can go to Reddit.
> allowing people who feel oppressed (whether they are or are not) to play in the "oppression olympics" by creating tangential opinionated discussions
Prior to your comment, nobody in this thread has said anything about any of this. This is all stuff that you seem to have read into things people have said that don't actually say anything of the sort.
You believe that an effective way to discuss things is to manufacture views that your interlocutors never expressed, and then consider it dishonest that they never expressed those views you manufactured for them?
I, for one, consider it very dishonest that you have yet to say a single word in this thread about your belief in leprechauns with pots of gold at the ends of rainbows. Why are you hiding your views? Just be honest!
Yet, often non-technical topics are upvoted massively, indicating big interest in HN community in this topic. So you are saying we should enforce the opposite, because 'this is Hacker news'? Not much of a difference to me as indifferent bystander, 2 extremists discussing whose side is more righteous if you ask me.
A random example - astronomy, my pet love, is discussed here often, yet rarely articles themselves have anything to do with 'hacking' or technology. I don't see much protests against that.
Inclusiveness here and in other similar places is good, not because it is "politically correct" (whatever that even means), but because diversity of all kinds is good for software technology as both a commercial and hobby interest.
This concept that diversity is good isn't even controversial beyond the culture war. Ask any financial planner how to manage your investment portfolio and they'll tell you it's important to diversify. Ask a power grid operator and they'll tell you it's good to have diversity across different kinds of generation.
Diversifying the kinds of people, viewpoints, and experiences that participate in our little corner of the world is good for exactly the same reasons. Putting all one's eggs into a single basket is always a bad idea.
Maybe you find active attempts to make the field more attractive to - that is, more inclusive for - different kinds of people annoying. That's fine, I think HN can be inclusive of both your annoyance and my annoyance with your annoyance :)
I was going to make a comment similar to this one, but you saved me the time. The fact that this site is not trying to be part of the otherwise global phenomena of politically-correct forced diversity is one of the thing which makes it good.
The funny thing about the way people use "politically correct" nowadays is that what you are saying is that the view "diversity is good" is not a correct one to espouse within your political tribe. That is, what you're saying is that it's not politically correct to have "politically correct" views. And nobody who espouses what you call "politically correct" views ever uses the term "politically correct". They just say what their actual views are.
The thing is, technology alone without taking care about ethics and politics as well can be extremely dangerous for society itself. Just look at Facebook, with Zuckerberg's infamous "the dumb fucks trust me" quote from its early days and later on the scandals about Cambridge Analytica or its role in getting Trump elected. Or Whatsapp and the series of lynchings resulting from the new feature of forwarding messages, leading to fake news spreading faster than the old "chain letters".
You make a strong point, but it's not clear to me that it addresses the concern of GP. That is to say, I find myself generally in agreement with your post and theirs and don't see a conflict, the clear harms you mention don't seem to me to result from insufficient "diversity" (in this particular sense).
> the clear harms you mention don't seem to me to result from insufficient "diversity"
Of course they do. Simply put: a bunch of young, rich white Western men - they never experience the insane danger that are part of the daily life of women: men stalking them using every way they can, raping them, killing them, or doxxing them just because they can "for the lulz". Both do not experience the racism and discrimination Black people go through, and neither of these have the experience of people in the Balkans, India or other countries with ethnic and religious tensions. And that's just the tip of the iceberg - discrimination runs rampant across all our societies, with technology lessening the effects of some of it (e.g. AI-generated descriptions of images for the blind), and making others exponentially worse (especially online harassment).
More diversity in anything tech automatically means more eyeballs on how a new (or existing) technology can be used by malicious actors to cause harm. For me the worst case in the last few years where this was clearly not done were AirTags - they are immensely useful, but it took over two years and uncountable reports of AirTags being used to facilitate crime of all kind to get a detection feature in Android [1].
Doesn't this conflate diversity of identity with diversity of perspective?
You don't have to be raped and killed daily to have an valuable opinion. Indians, Serbians, Black Americans, rich western whites, these are all just humans who, a priori, are just as worthwhile as one another.
I get that you have in mind particular kind of harm that you want to prevent, and that this is a priority for you, but reasonable people can and do differ in their opinions on what's harmful and what they'd like to talk about.
What is desired is broad diversity of experience and perspective. Statistically, if that goal is achieved, it will also result in diversity of identity, because many experiences and perspective are highly correlated with different identities, not universally, but statistically. This is pretty clear if you talk to a number of people across differences in both perspective and identity.
> You don't have to be raped and killed daily to have an valuable opinion.
The thing is socialization: women are taught from a shockingly young age to be wary of men, dark alleys, tunnels, parks, everything. Black people to be careful around police.
Of course even if you do not belong to a group of people who face regular discrimination, you can still be mindful of the issues the groups face - but it won't ever be an as natural part of your thinking.
It is certainly far from the case that all problems and weaknesses with software technology are due to historically being too much of a monoculture, but it is not true that none are.
I agree that facebook is a great example of tech being dangerous for society, but that it's an example of a blatantly politically correct censorship platform, besides the problems regarding mental/social health caused by using it.
The largest problems tech faces nowadays is not spreading fake news at the speed of light, but the suppression of real and necessary political discourse in what has arguably been a significant portion the new town square for the last century.
You think we need more political discourse in our lives? It seems to me that political discourse on social media is mostly limited to 'I'm pissed off that people don't agree with me and refuse to listen to them to understand why'. That doesn't seem helpful.
I think it is unreasonable to expect that hackers are expert assyriologists, material scientists, or sociologists, despite what we may think about ourselves. Some of us are fortunate enough to know many things and master a few more disciplines. Few of us have mastered everything.
I know that I'm a glorified glue monkey. On all other subjects, I am ignorant, and rely on the opinions of others.
After leaving reddit, I'm trying not to relapse into karma farming and speculating about topics which I have no expertise in, which just about leaves my own personal anecdotes about growing up Canadian. That, and asking the beginner's question. That's probably for the best for the health of the forum at large.
Welcome to Hacker News, where you curate your experience mostly the old-fashioned way - in your brain.
It doesn't always work out great, but no one ever promised it would. About three days in five, I look at the front page and shake my head. But the other two, it's worth more to me than any of the newspapers I actually pay for.
Because people might know that in that thread. How do I search for topics on HN that have > $n comments. I know it's possible, but I can't for the life of me remember how.
