Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jyaif | Hacker News Reader

This article is making a very important point. A lot of people thought that the internet would allow people to be confronted to different point of views, and as a result people would grow more tolerant and open minded. The opposite seems to happen: people are using the internet to be with people with the same beliefs, and this results in people being more certain about their beliefs.

</rant>

I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views.

View on HN

> I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views.

It has dawned on me over time that HN is like this, mainly because there's a single common non-siloed site, i.e. no subreddits into which people silo themselves. That means that on any divisive topic, anyone who feels strongly has comments in their face that they strongly dislike, and vice versa. (I wrote more about this downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12003205).

This is not an entirely good thing. It's responsible for most of the conflict that happens here.

I would definitely not describe HN as a place I come to get opposite points of view. I'm actually really very surprised anyone would see it that way, can you elaborate at all on why you do?

Dang is speaking about scenarios where there is no /r/ForHillary or /r/The_Donald to intermingle yourself with. You get both sides in one thread and are confronted with ideas that you may not agree with - or that you vehemently disagree with. Not that people "come to HN to see opposing views". Rather that they must see opposing views when browsing a thread. Then you get a bunch of conflict from both sides.

As an example, HN often has socially-related posts that hit the front page, such as today's Voice Modulation in the Interview Process (not actual title). This gets people from two very different sides that are informally split, depending on who you ask, as "overly politically correct regressives" and "stupid racist [___]phobic bigots". A bunch of conflict that detracts from the study/topic happens when those two groups butt heads.

You're assuming that there's a very wide range of people that visit HN, you can't get viewpoints from people that don't visit the site. I'd be surprised if a highly tech focused site called "hacker news" didn't have a strong bias towards certain demographics and viewpoints.

You'd be surprised.

If only there were some kind of survey mechanism on the site to test the various hypotheses. ;-)

Well I've just checked the front page and it seems extremely focused on a small range of issues. So I'm currently unsurprised.

Is there an article about the huge benefit of for-profit journals? How abortion is an affront to God? How ISIS is trying to do some good in an area?

Are you really suggesting there's really no bias towards certain demographics or viewpoints?

Are you two disagreeing about something, by any chance? :)

You could add articles against drug legalization, articles from a conservative (i.e. not libertarian or liberal) basis, articles against increasing city density, articles in favor of cars and suburban living, articles in favor of strong intellectual property laws, articles on the religious ideas and uses of technology, etc.

There's a definite demographic that posts here, and it is very much an echo chamber.

Here is an example of what I claim is not the case. We see angry arguments about all of those topics on HN. They're not even infrequent.

My claim is that you (I don't mean you personally, but all of us in your position) perceive HN as an 'echo chamber' on such issues precisely because it isn't. I imagine there are small biases on some of them, but people exaggerate this into "groupthink", "bubble", "echo chamber", etc., not because that's how it is but because that's how it feels.

It is an echo chamber for some of the threads, for other - people agree to disagree.

> Well I've just checked the front page and it seems extremely focused on a small range of issues.

This is by "design". These are almost the only things that are on-topic here and we mostly like it this way. I'm sure you know.

> Are you really suggesting there's really no bias towards certain demographics or viewpoints?

No one's suggesting that, but the fact that you had to pick those odd examples to make your point is evidence that on many common issues (which I hesitate to name because even naming them makes sparks fly) this community is deeply divided. And when people complain about HN being biased against their view, it isn't ISIS or abortion they're thinking of.

Almost always the top reply critiques the article and it's top reply critiques it. We're an opinionated bunch, it makes sense to me.

I got a few updates on my thoughts just a few minutes ago.

I value rational corrections even if I just think parts of it is correct; in some cases I've also come to changed my views somewhat.

What I think HN has taught me is that for any X you feel strongly about, if you actually were in a community that was evenly divided about X, you wouldn't know it. Instead, you would feel yourself surrounded by enemies. Why? Because we notice what we dislike more strongly than what we like. We remember painful experiences more than pleasurable ones, and it's painful to read comments opposing our strongly held X's. So people feel like the community is biased whether it is or not. Unfortunately they feel this the most about the most divisive topics.

I arrived at this view because I have a different perspective than most users. It's my job to monitor the site overall, plus pay attention to the complaints people make about it. From such a position one quickly notices how many complaints about HN contradict each another. For example, for any political X, some people are certain that HN is overwhelmingly X. But those claims can't all be true, so there has to be some distortion at work here.

Edit: here's an example I just ran across: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11990458. (I'm not mentioning that to single one user out; it's a common phenomenon, and this is just the first example I saw after writing the above.)

> What I think HN has taught me is that for any X you feel strongly about, if you actually were in a community that was evenly divided about X, you wouldn't know it. Instead, you would feel yourself surrounded by enemies. Why? Because we notice and remember painful experiences more than pleasurable ones, and it's painful to read comments against one's strongly held X's. So people feel like the community is biased whether it is or not.

This doesn't actually address the issue I feel there is in that HN is a fairly small group of people from a particular demographic. A site called "hacker news" with a heavy focus on technology and startups is surely likely to have some bias compared to a random sampling of the general population.

Any post added gets voted on and only a small number of the posts that get posted will get any real traction, do you feel there's no bias in the type of things that get to the front page?

As a quick example, how many of the frontpage articles do you really disagree with? Which ones are strongly against what you actually believe? I've just had a look and honestly there are none. Everything fits very comfortably with my general beliefs.

I have never felt like I was surrounded by enemies here.

It isn't that HN is a random sample of the population, but that on most divisive issues (e.g. politics or programming languages) it's much more divided than people think it is.

Re disagreements and conflict, I'm talking about the comment threads, not the articles. I don't think articles really excite agreement or disagreement at themselves (except about whether they should be on HN in the first place—another divisive topic), so much as provoke it in the threads.

Re not feeling surrounded by enemies: that's great, but note that the "feel strongly about" qualifier is a necessary condition for this effect.

I think it helps that HN has a common factor to bind us together. Professional Techies may be able to disagree in a less flamboyant style in most situations because at the end of the day politics is mainly seen in the light of how it affects the tech industry as a whole.

While there are also some folks that are undoubtedly passionate about their particular political views, they mainly get well thought out replies as to the argument they are presenting for and against... even if some people get a bit passive aggressive with the down voting.

If you get complaints from both side then you're doing OK.

I believe that this has shifted over time. It used to be that people had to put up with opinions that they didn't like from neutral sources. Now more people live in media bubbles, so honest disagreement is extremely jarring.

That's my belief as well. And I doubt that we appreciate the extent to which this has happened.

I think, rather, that HN has a dominant point of view which tolerates small differences but otherwise will downvote and [EDIT: hellban doesn't work like I thought] anyone who isn't circumspect enough in voicing their different opinions. I definitely couch a lot of my comments in sarcasm or careful disclaimers to try and avoid getting downvoted, as I've seen what can happen if you say The Wrong Opinion too plainly.

I used to feel the same way about HN, as being an echo chamber, but my feelings have shifted somewhat. This community does not like negativity, especially towards others. If you come up with a positive sentiment that expresses your opinion, it is much more likely to be voted up. Of course, not all things can be dressed up in positivity, but many online forums suffer from an excess of needless negativity, and HN is a breath of fresh air in that respect.

Agree. I feel respected on HN although my opinions are somewhat unusual in a number of cases. There are sometimes where I get a number of initial downvotes, but tell myself it probably mostly newcomers from reddit who just got their downvote button.

I chalk it down to HN being positive (and me being polite and not needlessly provocative), and I also try to help others who have been targeted by the downvote & flag squad as long as what they have said is somehow reasonable.

If you suggest that HN has low levels of negativity compared to others sites, I should just avoid most other sites. I used to read reddit regularly and at one point the level of negativity was just too much for me and I've been happier since I have left the site for good.

For a long time, I've been an avid HN reader. However, one day, months ago, I noticed that majority of posts in most threads I was reading on HN started with a variant of "You are wrong". It may be in some form that does not make it immediately apparent but once I noticed the pattern, it was hard to unsee it. After this, I just stop reading threads which have a lot of this and in general, I've found that the few threads that remain make for (relatively) pleasant reading.

I haven't yet found something better than HN though. So, I chose to stick around for now.

You're not wrong ;)

But in a discussion where you have an upvote button, there are basically only two follow-ups to an assertion which remain on topic: "you're wrong", or "you're right, and also". Anyone who wants to +1 will just click the upvote button.

Case and point: You're right and also...

"Me too" posts aren't worth posting so if I have nothing to add I'll +1 the comment I agree most with/is most accurate to my knowledge and leave it at that. The result being I have a lot more "You're wrong, here's why..." or "I disagree with [something said]" than I have posts saying "You're right, and also..." since I don't always have something to add. It makes me seem really negative - since nobody can see all the comments I've +1'd. Multiply that by every user on the site and things look more negative than they are.

I use "-1" for "You're horribly wrong and I don't have time to correct you (though sometimes I have time and will)" and "Trolling/Vapid posts". If someone is "a little wrong" I don't -1 them and will just post a minor correction.

HN doesn't "hellban" (or ban at all) people over opinions. Moreover, the two positions Dan singles out as uniformly against the prevailing sentiment on HN (anti-Snowden, pro-CFAA) happen to be positions I'm not too far from holding, and while I get downvotes for earnest comments about those topics, things generally level out pretty quickly.

If you have a belief that can't survive HN downvotes, to the point where you'll hide it simply to avoid those votes, you should consider how sincerely you hold those beliefs.

> If you have a belief that can't survive HN downvotes, to the point where you'll hide it simply to avoid those votes,

People with less karma need to avoid downvotes and flags because it affects how they can use the site - it affects the rate limiting they get.

(And because they don't know that they can email dang if they think they've been unfairly flagged.)

I thought you'd end up "dead" (hellbanned) if you get consistently voted down to negative scores. I don't know a lot about actual mechanisms of how karma and voting work on this site, though, so if I'm wrong about that I apologize and retract the "hellbanned" part of my earlier comment.

No, that's not at all how it works.

"Hellbanning" is a form of banning where the site takes steps to avoid tipping you off that you've been banned. It's ostensibly a defense against spammers and trolls, who will create new accounts after being banned.

For the past couple years, bans on HN are announced publicly. They're not automatic; the moderators do it directly. It's not based on your karma.

> bans on HN are announced publicly

For the most part. We don't do so for spammers or (sometimes) serial trolls.

Hellbanning exists in a subtler form, though. For instance, my account.

Top-level comments that are literally seconds old are typically posted about 2/3 down the page. None of my votes appear to actually count. It's been this way for several months.

I'm used to it, but it's still very annoying and I wish HN would actually acknowledge they do this.

> If you have a belief that can't survive HN downvotes, to the point where you'll hide it simply to avoid those votes, you should consider how sincerely you hold those beliefs.

I'm pretty sure that's not it at all[1]. I can see (and personally do these days) avoid[2] certain types of conversations because of all the down votes. It has nothing to do with not sincerely holding the belief, and it has everything to do with not wanting to expend the energy on comments that aren't actually going to be seen[3]. As you know, as a comment is down voted it turn grayer and grayer. Plus, if you're not as articulate as you wish you were, you are just going to feel frustrated that you couldn't get your point across.

This board, for most, takes up free time, and people tend to want to enjoy their free time.

1) in fact, that statement does rankle the feathers a bit - I've heard a variation that was meant to silence people

2) not very successfully at times

"HN has a dominant point of view"

I have difficulties thinking of HN in the singular - from what I can tell it is a group of people with pretty different views on most things. I don't think people get downvoted for expressing different views - pretty sure the times I have been downvoted it is because I've said something crass, irrelevant or just plain wrong!

> I have difficulties thinking of HN in the singular - from what I can tell it is a group of people with pretty different views on most things

It's such a relief to read this! Seems so obvious, but the trope of anthropomorphizing the community grows like weeds.

Sometimes I feel one needs to add <sarcasm> ... </sarcasm> because people just don't see it and will downvote you anyway.

I'm disheartened but not surprised to have learned that what HN is today conforms to your vision of a robust, multi-faceted debate. I, and nobody I know, would hold up HN as an example of vibrant debate, unless the subject of the debate is purely technical.

Frankly, I think you discount the extent to which people avoid or abandon comments out of an expectation that they'll be downvoted. If you don't already have them in place, analytics would go a long way in letting you know how often that happens.

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Edit: might've been unnecessarily personal

If you think I'm satisfied with HN, I wonder what other areas your model may be off base in, because that is far from true.

What I said is that because there's a single front page and set of threads, people reading comments on a divisive topic inevitably encounter comments they strongly dislike, and this affects their impressions of HN.

I know it's counterintuitive; that's why I brought it up. I find it interesting and far from obvious, something I only realized slowly over several years.

When I first joined I think that may have been how I saw it. However once I started commenting I was surprised to see how often myself or colleagues would be upvoted for supposedly controversial opinions.

HN is not what I would describe as true multifaceted debate, but I doubt any forum can achieve that as there always seem to be large groups with well formed opinions on the matter who do not wish to participate.

Discerning the reasons for participation or non participation is my go-to for understanding a topic, despite it always being almost impossible by definition.

The concept of "wisdom" is generally considered passe in the modern world, but it is becoming increasingly evident to me that we are going to have to develop some wisdom around a lot of our technology, and that a lot of our usage of it can be described as nothing less than "unwise".

Unfortunately, I don't know what "wise use" of social media looks like. Personally, I don't use it at all, but freely acknowledge this may be overkill. It's just my current adaptation.

Another example of what I mean is all the articles that pop up on HN about how the modern internet is destroying attention spans. How do we address that best? I'm not sure. I'm not sure anyone really knows. There's some people with some ideas, but I don't think we have enough people experimenting with pushing back against this to really know.

I don't think it's passé, just that we view the wisdom of previous ages in a generous light because we see them at their wisest.

That's how it works, though; it gets refined by time. The wisdom is not from "wise people", it's the stuff that survives, regardless of source.

I think the concept has gone passé [1] because ~60 years ago we flipped to a youth-focused culture, and youth generally have little respect for wisdom.

However, I'm not slagging on anybody for not knowing how to wisely use technology, because it does take time, and we haven't had much time! The best we could possibly be doing today is just considering the question, which is still better than not considering the question. I think there are a lot of people who would find the idea that there could be features of a social network that are "unwise" to use still a foreign concept. (Though I feel like certain aspects are starting to get into popular culture. The idea that Facebook can literally be depressing is starting to get out there, for instance.) And I wouldn't expect even tentative answers for another few years, minimum. It's a hard problem.

[1]: Hey, if you're going to make it easy to copy & paste I will :)

I'd say the "flip" to a more (relatively) youth-focused culture ~60 years ago was responsible for many of the positive cultural changes of the 20th century. If we accept that youth generally have little respect for wisdom, I would add that the older generations generally confuse experience, age, and tradition with wisdom, when they are profoundly different.

>Another example of what I mean is all the articles that pop up on HN about how the modern internet is destroying attention spans. How do we address that best? I'm not sure.

Assuming that "modern internet is destroying attention spans" is actually true. http://www.xkcd.com/1227/

> Another example of what I mean is all the articles that pop up on HN about how the modern internet is destroying attention spans. How do we address that best?

I realised this was a serious problem about 3 years ago, after reading The Shallows. (I knew I'd had the problem before, but didn't realise how serious it was). I feel I've pretty much solved it now and I'll happily spend my free time slowly reading 1000-page ancient tomes.

The only thing to do, really, is to try and maintain awareness of why you're reading any particular thing and what you hope to get out of it. E.g. - say you have many tabs open on a topic. You remind yourself that you initially had one simple question to answer, and decide - do you still just want to get a quick answer, or do you now want to research this topic in depth?

If you just want a quick answer, close all but the 1 or 2 most reliable looking sources.

Otherwise, make a note to schedule time to research the topic properly. For me this means creating a note in Evernote, jotting down what I think about the topic beforehand and my key questions, finding the best sources for answers to those questions, and possibly saving documents to read offline if they look like they merit careful study. This is actually more enjoyable, which is important - you need to train your subconscious to associate slow reading with pleasure, and skimming with anxiety and frustration.

For certain hot-button topics (like politics), I often do my own research, decide what I think, and then note how most discussion (even intelligent-sounding discussion) seems ignorant and shallow. I can also now see the huge value in well-edited writing - with the best writing, you can tell the author has chosen each word carefully, and simply by asking why they used a particular word over a near-synonym can reveal insights.

I could say more, but that's the basic idea. You really need to take responsibility for your own reading habits.

> Unfortunately, I don't know what "wise use" of social media looks like.

No one did. Well, possibly we had a very strong clue when looking at the impact of Television on society, on family, and on the individual. Wisdom, I suggest, would have counseled restraint given the preponderance of evidence that immersive technology had already proven disruptive.

> Another example of what I mean is all the articles that pop up on HN about how the modern internet is destroying attention spans. How do we address that best?

I've found having a narrow timeslot for being on the net works wonders. My schedule is somewhat extreme, usually limited to morning/afternoon email checks and a grab bag of open tabs to filter when disconnected. And of course, my mobile phone is just for that: phone calls. The benfits? In the past 4 years that I've adopted this, I've rediscovered the immense pleasure of being curled up with a book somewhere, etc.

Technology has always been a double edge sword for humanity, starting with Fire ...

This would be the social media equivalent to eating your vegetables, while many people know they should, they probably wont, confronting your users is a simple way to get them to leave for more comfortable surroundings.

> I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views.

You mean https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview

Yes!

There are definitely vacuum chambers that form, but I'd be hesitant to generalize the overall effect.

Does the increased access to points of view override the insular effect of seeking out like-minded thinkers?

Additionally, is it all bad that some people find support on the Internet that allows them to become firmer in their beliefs? If a homosexual boy finds support on the Internet for his feelings that he otherwise doesn't get in his real-life social environment - is that a bad thing?

> I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views.

I've long believed that forums are this answer.

Interests bring people together across political and geographical divides.

I run cycling forums, some tech forums, and even had a startup called Microcosm to try and spread this benefit I really believe in more widely (it failed, there's a story, there is always a story).

The things I think forums do best:

1. Bring people together around an interest, regardless of race, gender, class, wealth, and political or religious beliefs.

2. Because they bring people together, this frequently (especially when geographically centred) spills over into real life. Forums can be a cure for the modern disease of loneliness that cities spread.

3. Re-thinking political engagement and societal structures. Forums are able to model, test and implement on a small subset of a cross-section of society, various political systems. From dictatorships, through to shades of anarchy. In doing so they are able to imbue a sense of disenfranchisement, or ownership, or whatever... in the user of the forum.

Crazily, in an age of social networks, I believe in the forums and the interest network as the obvious solution.

I am perhaps wrong, my startup failed, but I still believe.

But what you are describing is not a forum per se, it's "topic-specific" meeting place. That can be anything, from an irc channel to a closed mailing list. Twitter could do this with access-moderated hash tags, for example.

That is true.

But...

If one of the primary functions of a service/site/app is to organise relationships via a network of people... then that isn't suitable for this purpose.

The core function needs to be organising around an interest (composed of 1 or more of: topic, place, time), and that core function is so strong that it shouldn't offer the secondary function of then networking around people.

People are very good at backing into small groups, forming cliques and communicating privately. Of constructing the very bubbles that are the issue here. A system that puts interests first has to avoid this by not encouraging it. It will still happen, but it shouldn't be a primary function.

> I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views.

Something like https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/ ? Indeed it is a fantastic idea for a site, but how can you hope for people to be open-minded when even HN is a big echo-chamber?

And this isn't happening just to our political views.

In music, videos, movies, etc - the whole 'recommended for you' concept is a bit of a paradox, because after an initial seed, the algorithm starts to influence your preference and then feeds in on itself until it becomes the exclusive provider of content and generator of your preferences.

After some time the line between 'recommended' and 'mandatory' becomes very thin - in theory you still can "just say no", but in reality we don't, because we like what we're being offered.

Not entirely true:

Spotify is hopeless. I train it by listening to high quality instrumental (i.e. no spoken words) music and it tries again and again to tell me I'd possibly like vocal music :-/

Whrn it comes to the music I use for work I'd like more bubble.

> I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views.

4chan

Strong opinions voiced a certain way will still probably devolve into a shouting match with crass language and potentially seething hate. But it's by definition not personal, as the responders are either responding to your points in earnest, or just trolling.

>4chan

OK, then I'd like to see a social network that confronts their users with opposite points of view and is not routinely used by people to get off on pictures and videos of someone's being or having been maimed or killed.

I was going to say. That's probably the one place you can easily interact with conservative (racist, anti-gay, sexist, xenophobic, etc) views.

Is it making fun of that though?

The confirmation bias that Facebook has created is indeed scary. Now that they wan't to be your source for news this is really troubling.

There's also another side to this which is is just a strange apathy that FB enables. People seem to think that ranting on FB to their friends of like mindedness somehow constitutes being an aware, informed and active citizen when all it is just a strange and sad malaise. There's a new tragedy? - quick change your profile pic to the flag of the country where said tragedy occurred - social responsibility fulfilled!

Sure all news is biased to some extent that's why its important to get your news from multiple sources. However if I could only choose one I would take a newspaper with an editorial bias which allows me to at least see all the articles over something that chooses and filters that for me based on some mystical weighting.

I remember when facebook & google were talking about personalization & knowing what you liked in order to show you more.

People talked about it beforehand that it would create insular thinking - that people would only receive articles that already confirmed their biases.

Seems that's happened :-/

I have thought about it too. Something like FilterBuster.io which analyses your Friendslist and tells you about your filter bubble rating, and then recommends friends of friends who might hold different viewpoints than you.

Or maybe for MVP, a subreddit which does the same thing but manually.

> I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views.

This kind of moral relativism is exactly part of the problem. Some positions are wrong no matter how many people believe in them. Things like Brexit happen exactly because we choose to tolerate things like religion, giving all the homophobes, creationists, conspiracy theorists, racists, math phobes, etc the idea that their world view is acceptable.

It's a difficult line to walk social justice warrior. At the end of the day it's a fact that religion sets up a psychology that is more positive than the mass psychology of the consumer civilization. That part of religion, a psychology that is resistant to the chaos and disappointment of the world is definitely something that's positive about religion and there are no alternatives in other discourses that are equivalent.

> That part of religion, a psychology that is resistant to the chaos and disappointment of the world is definitely something that's positive about religion and there are no alternatives in other discourses that are equivalent.

Have you heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism or are you trolling?

Christianity is an the answer to Stoicism. Stoicism has no good news and prescribes suicide if you can't take it any more. Christianity promises Heaven.

> I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views.

Debates tend to polarize people so it wont do much good.

Good debates don't. Shouting matches, to which many unmoderated "debates" devolve, do.

I think Brigade (https://www.brigade.com/) has the potential to be a social network that gives you both opposing views and your own views. However this will probably never be a mass-market social network, so it's impact on the democratic will probably be minimal.

>I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views.

I'm with you, but I'm still looking for reliably high-quality reading suggestions. My Pocket feed is abysmal.

I mention this because confronting someone with a poorly-reasoned argument is not good UX, especially when one disagrees with the content.

Agreed.

This reminds me of a related unexpected networking effect. I read a study that hypothesized that internet-enabled chat on mobile phones would distribute more messages across a more diverse set of one's friends and acquaintances.

Instead, the study found the opposite: communication became more concentrated, with a greater proportion of communications going to a smaller subset of people. To analogize, messaging habits became "deeper" not "wider"; more extreme, not more diverse.

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