It's not irrelevant, it's just incredibly tiring reading the same comment over and over again on every thread that remotely mentions Google launching a new product.
> For example, if there's a post about the new Threads app, and someone comments about Meta's record on, say... security, data privacy
- Ctrl+F "security". Exactly 0 comment hits (on the first page).
- Ctrl+F "privacy". There are three hits, and two of them just mention "privacy policy" without making a comment about Meta's previous privacy violations.
- Ctrl+F "moderation". Exactly one hit about how Meta has historically been bad about moderation.
Let's look at the current post about Google launching this product (NotebookLM). Ctrl+F "kill". There are at LEAST ten comments about how Google will kill this product off soon. It's not comparable to the discussion re. Meta and its history.
Google killing off products is table stakes at this point. Imagine every time you clicked on an HN discussion about Python, you had to read ten comments about how Python is slow and if you want a faster language you should use Rust. "Python slow, Rust fast." Yes, we get that already. Can we just skip the memetic comments about "Google bad cuz they kill stuff" and read discussion with more meat?
I meant the Threads point as a hypothetical example not a literal one. I see annoying and repetitive comments on HN all the time. I don't have to upvote them or engage with them at all. I can merrily skip on by. Unless they're being abusive or threatening, I don't see what the problem is?
Clearly enough people think Google's record of hypeware-to-abandonware cycle is worth raising again and again because it's a frustrating aspect of the company's 'innovation' process and HN is a fairly influential place to keep that issue alive in the hopes that it might lead to some change or at the very least inform people who are considering investing a lot of time, energy, and capital into depending on such projects. It's also not exclusive to Google[1], though perhaps the one most notorious for it.
I've also found those "Python slow, Rust fast" threads genuinely useful because they prompt people to report on progress in Python on that front, or indeed even how the two languages can work together to play to each other's strengths.[2]
> For example, if there's a post about the new Threads app, and someone comments about Meta's record on, say... security, data privacy
OK, let's look at the Threads launch post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36580192.
- Ctrl+F "security". Exactly 0 comment hits (on the first page).
- Ctrl+F "privacy". There are three hits, and two of them just mention "privacy policy" without making a comment about Meta's previous privacy violations.
- Ctrl+F "moderation". Exactly one hit about how Meta has historically been bad about moderation.
Let's look at the current post about Google launching this product (NotebookLM). Ctrl+F "kill". There are at LEAST ten comments about how Google will kill this product off soon. It's not comparable to the discussion re. Meta and its history.
Google killing off products is table stakes at this point. Imagine every time you clicked on an HN discussion about Python, you had to read ten comments about how Python is slow and if you want a faster language you should use Rust. "Python slow, Rust fast." Yes, we get that already. Can we just skip the memetic comments about "Google bad cuz they kill stuff" and read discussion with more meat?