One way or another, it has stopped being fun for me and started becoming a drag. Too much politics, too much inane nonsense. Yet I feel compelled to go there.
A valid criticism of facebook, but that's not at all what he's talking about. He's saying that to the extent that he uses facebook for his career (ie: marketing his books), he feels that he's giving away the contents of his book and that is ultimately hurting sales:
Professionally, I’m thinking it may be good for one’s career and business to be off social media altogether. Chris Anderson was wrong. “Free” doesn’t lead to anything but more free. Working for free isn’t leverage to do a talk for loads of money; now they even want you to talk for free. What am I supposed to do? Join YouTube and get three cents for every 100,000 views of my video? That is crap; that is insane!
It's a completely ridiculous notion that's contrary to what anyone who is making money in the digital economy has figured out: digital content is marketing for stuff you can charge for. The fact that Rushkoff can't find stuff to charge for is indicative of a painful truth that he should consider: he's actually not creating that much value.
He complains about getting 3c for every 100k youtube views, but never at all considers justifying why people should listen to him, simply that it costs him time to create this content.
It's actually a pretty marxist philosophy (the labor theory of value), and it has huge limitations in terms of describing our economy.
Rushkoff has been charging for stuff since before Eternal September. He has a track record of making things happen that dates back to a time before "startup" was a word with an online scene associated with it.
>never at all considers justifying why people should listen to him, simply that it costs him time to create this content.
I suspect he's done a lot more considering than many HN readers have.
It's true that Rushkoff is making - and has always made - the dissenting point that perhaps the Internet should be more than a machine for extracting cash and attention from the people who use it.
In fact he's suggesting that the most useful models are the ones that contribute to users instead of trying to battery farm their time - and also that "creating shareholder value" really isn't the most sophisticated or interesting of all possible social and economic goals.
I don't doubt some people find his views threatening. Personally, I don't see any reason to dismiss them out of hand without at least trying to understand them first.
> It's true that Rushkoff is making - and has always made - the dissenting point that perhaps the Internet should be more than a machine for extracting cash and attention from the people who use it.
And I'm disagreeing with the premise that it is just a cash extracting machine, because it is so only in the most simplistic and overly cynical of analyses. I get that it hasn't solved world hunger, and I get that there are many problems, but I think if Rushkoff understood how the web functioned at a deeper technical level he'd feel a lot less strongly about his beliefs. Similar to the Marxists that form the foundation of his beliefs, if he actually had to implement his ideas in real life he'd understand why they aren't a panacea.
HN has the "anything that's interesting" policy, which means I see a lot of stuff that only serves to distract me. I waste too much time reading newsy posts here or I catch myself following clickbait titles. I want to stay on top of the latest tech and that's all really. I've started using reddit more these days. Following subreddits gives me links that are more focused.
Two, I find it far too easy to be downvoted into oblivion here. I frequently type up a post, just to close the window before I hit reply. I know I'm just going to get downvoted/hidden/deleted for having a point of view that is from somewhere outside the primary demographic here. I then realize I've wasted my time and additionally I feel ostracized as well.
And the third.. this may seem kinda silly to most here.. is the name: Hacker News. Completely innocuous to computer programmers, but if "normals" see someone browsing a site named Hacker anything, it raises eyebrows. I was recently blocked from visiting this site in a foreign country, and I really can't describe the sort of sinking feeling I had when that happened. I suddenly realized where I was. My inner monologue went something like: "So now I'm going to be dragged to some foreign dungeon, for visiting a site that doesn't really care for my voice, to read articles that just distract me from focusing on my true interests. Why am I so stupid?"
Yeah, I'm calm now that I'm back home, but I'll sorta worry when I have to go back there again.
(I very nearly closed the window again. Hitting reply this time. You should hear the truth occasionally. Even if it's only a fleeting glimpse before I am deleted.)
The good part is that I have become a significantly better programmer from the articles and comments on HN. Although, most of the improvements came from the first year of using HN and then it's started to taper off since.
I should probably use HN less, but I think it has genuinely improved my life more than any other social media website.
But this is pretty damaging, wouldn't you say? Not too long ago, I would follow several consumer tech blogs, and jump right into the comments, because the stories were increasingly page-view driven garbage that needed 8 separate blog posts of ~200 words each to describe one story. The comments tended to provide much more insight than the actual "article".
With HN, (which I've been visiting for <2 years), I'm noticing that the articles posted tend to be long-form and generally thought-provoking. I make an effort to read the article, collect my thoughts on them, and only then view the comments.
They may touch technically very good topics, but the aggregate content, in my eyes, has become shallower. It's almost like the HN crowd is being systematically baited with superficially interesting tech posts.
(A very enjoyable exception: nautil.us - for me the posts are either entirely irrelevant, or readable and interesting with a high probability. I don't remember experiencing much of a middle ground yet.)
So, when my time is limited, I tend to check the discussion before hitting the link. Usually the first few posts are enough to confirm whether the link itself is worth visiting or not.
And sure enough, a primary motivator for this is that finding non-clickbaity titles is increasingly rare. HN thread activity and tone acts as a pretty decent bloom filter.
This isn't a facebook problem, I have done the same with Twitter and would do it with HN if I could.