I have found myself lately to feel indifferent to many threads on HN that would otherwise have exicted me because of the insane world politics events which were occuring simulatenously but without mention. There is an intelligent crowd here, and important topics ought to be discussed, not just the latest hacker news.
I think a lot of people in tech unintentionally blind themselves to reality by obsessing over technology, and then thinking that is all that matters. It’s a behavior that is incentivized because it helps those with power utilize the tech-blind’s skills for their bidding.
spot on. I am continually shocked by the number of people I work with who will actively contribute to ends that are ultimately against their own best interests just because they are intrigued by the technical aspects of a problem
I disagree. There are lots of interesting things happening in the world, and the HN crowd does a good job talking about them. Those topics—the ones where HN has high quality conversation—are why I come to HN.
Since the inauguration the HN crowd has not done a good job talking about politics. Where we used to be able to have some of the best discussions and comments on political issues I've seen on the internet, the last month or two has consisted primarily of hot takes and aggression, and I can get my dose of that anywhere else, I don't need it here.
The crowd isn't some invariant. The people here and quality of their responses is a function of the kind of topics that get discussed here, the repetition these topics receive, and the grace others have in receiving those comments. You can't just neatly swap in the HN community and say "okay you used to discuss Elixr tooling now it's time to discuss US politics."
What happens instead is, people start getting heated at each other and vitriol across the site increases. Folks who don't find that grace anymore exit the site and folks who are heated stay. This attracts other people who want to be heated. This creates a downward spiral across the community. This isn't HN specific, it's the same thing that happened to pretty much every other public internet community once they started featuring lots of discussion on polarizing politics.
The entire reason HN used to be high quality open internet forum is because politics wasn't a huge part of its contents. But the site has been under quality pressure for some time now and ever since the start of Trump 2024 it's started going downhill faster than it was before. That's fine of course, if folks just want to battle out politics and shout at each other or cry out in anger they can go ahead. But it won't be the "intelligent crowd here" doing it. Those folks will go elsewhere.
As an example, this thread is ridiculously large (2818 comments as of this writing.) There is no way for a reader to get much out of this without copious amounts of minimizing threads, scrolling randomly, or page-searching for terms. The only sense I can make of it is throwing the thread into Gemini and asking it to summarize it for me. The summary tells me nothing that my own thoughts and some social media comments I've read don't already tell me. So what has the "intelligent crowd here" really given us? I'm waiting for op-eds from the MSM and blog authors I follow to give me literally anything more rigorous than the slop in this thread.
> There is no way for a reader to get much out of this without copious amounts of minimizing threads, scrolling randomly, or page-searching for terms...
Or you could, you know, jump from parent to parent and actually read the threads that interest you. I wholly disagree with your broad assessment. I have seen plenty of substantive, interesting comments in threads like this. Of course there will be duds, but that's equally true in threads about the latest front end web framework.
Intelligence and outrage are not mutually exclusive. Again, the world is not an apolitical place. If you do not represent and speak up for your own values, someone else will decide your fate for you. This forum, like all others is a chance to signal boost and stand for the values you care about.
The moderators have also done a good job of keeping the volume of these threads reasonable. Sure, on the new page they are rampant, for good reason, but only one or two max make it to the top thirty on a given day.
Agree to disagree. Speaking up for your own values has nothing to do with winning elections. For that, voters in R districts need to call their reps and tell them their mind. Internet comments don't win win votes.
One problem, which I fear you might be falling into, is that people who find themselves in a minority position tend to get frustrated and then lash out at others in ways that break the rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
Then they get downvoted and flagged, quite correctly (because, by hypothesis, they're breaking the rules), and often get sucked into a positive feedback loop*, in which they get even more frustrated and start breaking the rules even worse. Eventually they decide that the entire community is against them and that they can never get a fair hearing.
The conundrum is this: on the one hand, we want commenters with minority views on HN (because it's better for the mandate of the site) and we try (in our limited way) to protect them from abuse by majorities. On the other hand, we can't make it ok for them to break the rules just because they're in a minority. If they keep it up, we have to ban them the same way we would ban others who do that—it's not as if the rules can change depending on demographics, opinions, and so on.
The only approach I know of that has a chance of working is (1) to describe this dynamic to the commenter in your position, (2) acknowledge that there's a greater burden on people who are arguing for minority views, (3) acknowledge that this is unfair but also inevitable, and then (4) try to persuade them (i.e. you in this case) that it's in your interest to scrupulously follow the rules, even when other commenters aren't doing that.
There are at least two reasons why this is in your interest, even though it's hard to do under pressure, and unfair that minority commenters are under extra pressure to begin with.
The first reason is that it will make your comments more persuasive to open-minded readers. There may not be many open-minded commenters on hot/divisive topics, but commenters are a small minority of readers. The more you fall into the trap of venting at other people's wrongness, the more you're going to lose the larger, silent audience who may be persuadable. Worse, in cases when your argument happens to be correct, you're going to end up discrediting the truth that you're arguing for—which is bad for everyone.
The second reason is that if you scrupulously follow the rules, such as by editing out all snark, name-calling, flamebait, and so on from your comments, then if other commenters respond to you by breaking the rules, moderators are in a much different position: we can reply and ask them not to do that without getting a "but what about what they did?" finger-pointing response. Or if we do get such a response, there's a lot more we can say.
I highly respect your contributions to HN and your moderation work. Your post is thoughtful and well written.
It has been incredibly frustrating to witness multiple social networks fall victim to cult-like political ideologies over the years. Seeing that happen once again on HN is especially disheartening. Consider what has happened to Reddit over time—it used to be full of diverse perspectives, but now it has become a toxic, radical-left cult. The same dynamic appears to be unfolding here, and from what I can tell, it is worsening.
I realize I need to do better and avoid resorting to low-effort posts. I agree with what you've said, and I'm glad you're fighting the good fight.
It may be best for me to move on and find somewhere else to lurk—a place that has not yet fallen victim to this scourge.
How would you distinguish between what you csll TDS and sharing of opinions that are group of intelligent between collectively strongly agree on ...like the fact that Trump ran has run many scams throughout his life including Trump University.
Like how can some piece of negative information can be collectively held by a crowd without it being tds?
I assure you your allies see it. What’s funny is what did the US give up its leadership of the free world for exactly? The price of eggs? It took the British Empire fighting two world wars to lose its place! The US is collapsing and the experiment has clearly failed.
