I know – this is probably the thousandth time you have heard this complaint, but please hear me out. I have been lurking and reading on HN since 2016 (I never actively commented til 2019), and the spirit of discussion was outstanding then (2016-2020). The amount of high quality posts and discussions about the technical and operational sides of technology and the tech industry was astounding! Yet, something seems to have changed with the culture on this site since 2020 – it feels as if the site has become a parody of itself, with “edgy” hot takes, cargo culting around supposedly conventional knowledge, and the insane amount of “stanning” of certain figures gossip and a handful of companies. The increase in political content as well has been a massive change on this site as well, and as this is a discussion board it is fair game for everyone to have a say assuming civility. Yet this civility does not exist – discussions instead devolve into a passive aggressive form of brawling, with no actual insights coming out from other side. Finally, as someone who is friends with a number of YC founders, there has been a recent trend among batchmates to start creating false traction/“demand Gen” for their products by astroturfing comments and submissions. And this is without explicitly saying it’s a marketing post. Big picture, it almost appears as if HN has become what Reddit felt like in 2015-16, which pushed me to this site itself, and it is extremely depressing for me to see a discussion board that has helped propel my career start to lose it’s low noise to story ratio.
Story Published at: July 25, 2022 at 04:23PM
Story Published at: July 25, 2022 at 04:23PM