Recently, in 2026, something has extremely changed. The focus on politics and bots and botting and propaganda and accusations and a lot of thing. Some people say it was before but I don't know how to feel about that because i learnt so many interesting things from HN in 2025
So firstly someone decided to call me clanker for no apparent reason (https://files.catbox.moe/5yp9qo.png) and their comment got flagged and my response couldn't be seen
Then I was insanely frustrated. I try to be more calm usually because one day If I ever create a company, I want HN community to reflect how my behaviour was and also I don't usually see the points on being mad but today I digress and I hope that's okay.
For context I am a 17 year old who joined HN in 2024
https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=46628858&goto=threads%3Fid%3Dlovich%2346628858
Now they mention that my account is post LLM and I try to show my frustration in that but what does that mean for youngsters like me? Will we never be able to get reputation as a human being.
I don't even know how to proven we are human or not.
The botting and flagging and propaganda problem in HN has been insane these past couple of days. I posted a post about How US freezes visa for 75 days and that gets flagged too perhaps by bots too
So in a way, I got screwed by both sides. What reasons are for me to stay here, I am just deeply upset about this situation because i genuinely beleive in a trust based economy. After AI the one thing people lost is trust and I thought that my comments in HN verify my authenticity, that I care about some projects deeply to my heart and this account was a reflection of that.
I love small web, small businesses. I want to open it some day too. I try to help people when I can on hackernews through the open source projects I know of on github. I wouldn't consider myself an extreme programmer and I still vibe code usually for prototyping but I am still in High school and I have thoughts about skipping AI or extremely curbing its use once I get into college
I genuinely used to think that surely there must be one college who would like a guy like me from my hobbies and such and I could get referral into decent university through this about the fact that I have commented some deep things on Hackernews.
I could've created my own blog and in fact some of my comments are longer than people's blogs but I didn't end up doing because i wanted genuine feedback and my posts just never gained traction and HN comments got more eyeballs and even though I didn't earn anything from it, it helped give more perspective and nuance and that's all I want because I want to grow as a person.
I must ask for help man, Please fix this community's botting and distrust possibility if not for the current state, atleast for the future like us youngsters please.
have a nice day everybody & (Edit: but I hope that HN can fix itself from this botting problem, its one of the few communities which is "literally me" and I am literally you. I love most things about HN, from the open source projects recommendations and discussions to showcasing cool projects and cool blogs and ideas all while we can have a place to comment about it respectfully and some of the people here are heavily experienced so you get to learn. But alas, the past few days have been a rough experience personally on HN)
This one statement of yours crystallizes the bigger flaw in your perspective, though: "I could get referral into decent university through this about the fact that I have commented some deep things on Hackernews."
You are over-valuing HN. A good comment here doesn't get you into college. A bad comment here doesn't change what your employees will think of you if you have some in the future. Overall, HN is not required to model itself to your desired topics and conversations. While it is a really decent place that many of us enjoy, it is still just a discussion board. And one that works exactly because the community monitors and moderates it.
If you don't like the moderation and truly feel wronged, email the mods at hn@ycombinator.com.
BTW, Odds are this post will also get flagged because complaining about flagging is another topic that is not interesting.