Is HN Dying?

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Ai babble is flooding everything... A lot of companies are eagerly laying off employees to have chat GPT churn out the same tone-empty and nothing-new derivative-article content everywhere. Coupled with anti-competitive SEO tactics, bot spam, human spam, subliminally suggestive marketing, long winded CTA clickbait videos, and paid ad promotion on social media, the Internet is ripe with all sorts of annoying schemes and scams to get attention that is totally destroying all hope for effective information and communication pretty much everywhere you go online now.

I hope people will wake up and start striking against platform dictatorships and profiteering for everything, but I doubt it will happen, and I think there will simply be a lot of meltdowns everywhere and frustrated people that will eventually learn that we'll all see a lot less ads if we go back to meeting up at coffee shops, diners, and bowling alleys for our entertainment off this "scorched hellscape of a parking-meter-esque pay for being unfulfilled" Internet.

Sorry for the rant. :P

> Comments are shortening and discussions are now almost indistinguishable from Reddit.

I couldn't disagree more. Comments here are still substantial, jokes are downvoted, trolls are flagged.

HN has actually gotten better in the last few years afte4 they resumed demoting of political content. It's much harder to find a flamewar on HN than it was in, say, 2017.

For me HN is dying because of the increasing amount of negative/depressing news we have in the front page year after year. I know that covid happened, and the war, and recession, and what not… but I do not come to HN for that. I come for Hacker news. The other kind of news I got at my usual newspaper.

Layoffs, RTO, stupid CEOs decisions… I couldn’t care less. But I guess HN is what their owners want from it, so I better quit soon.

I would say HN has become less intimidating. A couple of years ago I was petrified of posting here because something I said wasn't 100% correct, or not insightful enough. I feel like it's relaxed a bit since then.

As for comparing HN to reddit?! No, reddit is a sea of mindless groupthink that upvotes jokes, cute animals and general internet junk.

For some subreddits (minus the controversial ones), the quality of discussion is pretty damn good. Of course there's also memes and annoying people who don't respond seriously to posts, so you do have to shift through a lot of noise.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32225652

I am loathe to comment on this topic due to it being against the site guidelines but I have noticed a distinct up-tick in both meme comments and shallow joke comment threads. It’s a little cringe to read, but there is still plenty of substantiative conversation here, so I wouldn’t exactly say it’s turning into Reddit; but there is definitely an element of Reddit (and 4chan for that matter). I think it’s increasing, but I don’t have the data to back it up. For now I can just downvote unsubstantial comment trees and move on.

Comments are shortening

If only that were true. Still too many narcissists compelled to recount their life's vicissitudes in every comment.

Perhaps the questions to ask are:

0. Who aren't around HN anymore, and for what reason(s)?

1. Who stuck around HN for a long time, and for what reason(s)?

2. Who joined HN recently and how did they find out about it?

3. Where are 0. people at now?

I think forums fall either of 6 ways:

A. To uncivilized behavior

B. To continual witch hunt

C. Arbitrary, immature, clique moderation

D. To lack of contribution through active participation and content creation

E. To egotistical participants who push others aside: individuals who disagree loudly, constantly, and proclaim they are always right while lacking an ability to recognize ideas that weren't theirs

F. To mediocrity: someone signs up to HN because they saw it on the news, not because they're applying to YC or work in some obscure, high-bar-to-entry subject matter expertise field

I think it got less focused on technology over time and probably more people without technical background joined. In result more often than before happens, that someone is discussing topic, that isn't theirs area of expertise.

HN is still 100% distinguishable from Reddit which is now worse than YouTube used to be for commenting. I can't think of anywhere worse than Reddit right now.

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: Hacker News is dying

No. It's still the absolute best. And often I will read just the comments on big stories vs. the stories themselves. I never do that on reddit.

It's more that Reddit is getting better (surprisingly) than Hacker News is getting worse.

I still enjoy HN, after all these years.

The community is much broader now than it was in, say, 2010, but I find the discussions to be of good quality. Much of that is thanks to 'dang’s splendid moderation.

I don't think it's dying, even if it's changed, I still find the linked articles and discussion to be superior to all other popular and similar sites.

There's actually interesting info about this in the site guidelines.