As someone who started reading HN 7 years ago and (started participating in this amazing forum in late 2013, but of course mostly reading because I don't always have interesting things to say), I feel like over the years things have changed a lot on HN. The content here have a very different taste to them now. It might look like I am following the hashtag-X-is-dead trend and trying to play devil's meta-advocate here. I am just wondering what have changed and why I feel this way.
Please don't get me wrong. Of course there are still a lot of interesting topics and discussions going on and overall HN remains a unique place on the Internet and I'm still learning a lot reading HN - that has never changed.
But if someone is to ask me if HN is dead I would answer in the affirmative. HN in the recent years is just not the same HN I grew up with. It felt like a different place. It's like if I were to market a product to people here vs market the product to people here 4 years ago I will do it very differently (or even change the product, maybe).
I'm just curious what are other people's thoughts on this. Perhaps I am just being anal. Perhaps I'm becoming more narrow-minded as the world gets more polarised. So here is the question: will you agree or disagree with the proposition that "HN is dead" and why?
Things change. Just because they aren't what they used to be, doesn't mean they're "dead", even if you don't like the change.
You're fishing. It would be one thing to say "Why don't we see more posts about topic X?" or "I find these types of discussions don't happen as much because ... What do you think?"
But instead you put up a nebulous, obviously hyperbolic "Is HN Dead" post. Your post adds little to the type of substantive discussion that is valuable on HN.
- It's dominated by fewer companies that only seem to grow larger and larger. These companies haven't changed for a long time. Boring.
- Everyone decided X86 is going to be the main platform for everything that's not a smartphone or embedded device. Hardware has become boring and locked into this.
- Anything embedded that can have 32MB or more of RAM is an ARM-based Linux system. I think there's still a few MIPS holdouts. Embedded has become boring until RISC-V gets critical mass.
- Anything new mobile is either Samsung or iPhone. ARM bricks with touchscreens, battery, and a bunch of sensors. Fundamentally not different than the 2000's, just faster, more efficient, etc. Smartphones and mobile have become boring.
- Most people are poorer now than they were in the boom 90's when all this started. So everything becomes a spy platform to deliver ads. This is so common it's boring now.
- The smartphone and streaming have replaced the TV for everyone except boomers. Video streaming as a technology stopped being interesting a long time ago.
- Facebook and apps have replaced the news for most people. The rest have 24/7 cable news broadcasts. Facebook has been around a long time. It's not a mystery how Facebook works. It's boring.
So, political, social questions are coming more to the forefront.
What, roughly, is it that you say has changed a lot? Would it be the broadening of topics, from purely software/tech to news and political topics which software/tech has influenced, and is now enmeshed with?
I read HN for years before I signed up. In my case, I joined because I wanted to become involved in some conversations - now open to me as a potential participant rather than as a clueless but interested observer. For me, HN changed - for better or worse - in ways that included me more. My background is as a production-side journalist (sub-editor, deputy editor etc) who became fascinated by tech when, in 1994, I took an online role in a pioneering news project in the UK. After that, I combined news roles with informing the design of CMSs and other newsroom tools; I have worked with many developers. Now, I am more in project/product management of, mainly, media tools.
For me, at any rate, HN has shifted from an interesting source of tech news - what are the latest frameworks, what's happening with search/tracking/social technologies - to discussions of how these things impinge on or affect my work and life. I still enjoy reading all the way-over-my-head stuff, anything from Hubble to Ligo to quantum mechanics, though.
Is your objection to HN now vs then because you see it along the lines of the "Eternal September"[1] influx of inappropriates who in effect choked Usenet to death?
I see it differently - and, of course, I am just guessing at your objections - and enjoy my time on HN; so many subject specialists and practitioners, pioneers even, chip in across so many domains.
The success of HN for me, I suspect, hinges partly on a self-policing group of contributors and commentators, but also and even more so on some deft, even-handed and nicely judged moderation by real people.
Edited to add clarification of Eternal September:
But to your question, I have noticed the comments in general appear shorter, less useful, more "armchair expert", and in more of a bubble. And yes I feel like I am partially to blame.
Content on the home page is gone and new content arrives. Due to the moderating system it is not as if every story is hogged by the same people insistent on the world believing their viewpoint.
However, what does 'kill' HN for would be participants is nitpicking. It is easier to be destructive and to mod something down for a minor detail than it is to write something substantive. Some people may find life is too short for ungrateful nitpicking behaviour and go elsewhere where ideas can be shared and improved on rather than nitpicked.
I imagine a lot of people here came from usenet, slashdot, digg, early Reddit, etc. continuing to move on as the sites went more and more mainstream and began to lose their character.
What's next?
As the technocracy consensus has reacted to the election of Trump the band of acceptable discussion has narrowed a bit, but it isn't awful.