When the Genius Men of Silicon Valley Suddenly Don't Seem So Smart
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
I have theories on how sites like this evolve, but will refrain from brain-dumping unless folks are interested.
When I joined this site 5 years ago, I justified my viewing it at work as a one-order-removed from my job. I learned a lot, I was exposed to web development and other things for the first time, and I eventually caught the entrepreneur itch and pursued it because HN had given me both the knowledge and the inspiration. I thank pg and YC for that.
That said, over the last few years I've noticed some things:
Content quality is getting drastically less technical. In the submission guidelines, the rule is nominally "Anything that good hackers would find interesting.". The problem is that people are focusing on "interesting" not on "good hackers". Often stories that seem like good reads but are utterly unrelated to computing get posted here, just because somebody wanted to read about politics or history or nifty product demos or popsci clickbait. Things that should never make it here are put up just because they are interesting, not because they are interesting-to-good-hackers. This is an anti-pattern.
Content marketing clutters up the submissions. A lot of stories here are basically junk "Hey check out our API (and buy our service!)" or "Let me write some platitudes about vaguely software-related stuff so that you'll click my company links at the end of the post". This sort of growth-hacking is exactly the playbook espoused by YC-style startups, which is fine, but in this case they're making HN less valuable for all of us by treating it like a cheap clearinghouse for advertising to devs. At times the frontpage feels like a less green, easier-to-read feed of TechCrunch (and that sucks!).
The users don't respect each other when submitting stories. A lot of users clearly see the site as a way of throwing up links to self-promote or to ask dumb questions or to navel-gaze on Valley drama that doesn't affect everyone else. They don't really contribute outside of their own submission threads, they post clickbait, they do drive-by advertising, and generally waste bandwidth.
The users don't respect each other when writing comments. It's very difficult to have a civil discussion in most threads these days when you have a significant difference of opinion, because you get downvoted remorselessly. It also seems to me that the default attitude of assuming good-faith posting and engaging with the same courtesy has gone away, being replaced with lazy baiting and ad hominem attacks and namecalling--things which people get away with as long as they are following the HN crowd orthodoxies, which makes it even more harmful.
There is active suppression of user opinions from other orthodoxies. Flag-killing and heavy moderation serve to create an echo chamber, but here more importantly to radicalize and make even more obnoxious and disrespectful rude posters. If somebody has had multiple threads detached because they rubbed the mods the wrong way (hi dang!), they're less likely to actually try and write good replies. Instead, you end up with a bunch of garbage sockpuppet accounts or just outright spam as people get frustrated at being ignored and no longer feel like they need to craft words and be polite. The site doesn't respect the users, so the users don't respect the site. It's rubbish.
Anyways, as for other sites, I could probably give you some via the email in my profile. For obvious reasons--e.g., I don't want to make it easy for the same bad posters and culture that has pervaded this site to spread--I won't mention them here for the lazy.
The main thing here is that we chose this future. We built platforms for 140 sniping, and we built censorship tools that helped enable filter bubbles. We built ad tools to monetize rage and not journalism.
We bent over prostrate at the ideas of "equality", diversity, and freedom--all with the best of intentions! We ousted Brendan Eich, we gave Thiel a pass because he was outed by Gawker, and now?
Now they're going against the guys that sign our checks and cheerlead our endeavors.
If this is finally a step too far, if this is a gross misrepresentation of reality or a hit piece, we're late to the party. The time to have avoided this was years ago.
Bunch of hypocrites.
I think this is spot on. If someone says something hateful, and I retweet it, am I not also saying something hateful? Say I don't retweet the actual comment, but instead respond w/ "Have some money." Is that not still an endorsement of the hateful speech?
Ultimately, I think we can view hatred as a kind of ignorance and fearfulness of the unknown, and therefore as a kind of stupidity.
It logically follows that endorsing a stupid candidate is itself a form of stupidity.
Now that our (US) government is in the business of defining our words for us (eg, "terrorist", "hate speech"), I think it would be wise for us commoners to start working out amongst ourselves what we want these words to actually mean so that we can agree on their definitions.
My current definition of "hateful" would be anything that points to some "other" as "less than".
What's your definition?
My definition of hate speech is when Trump says "hey, {black people,white people,men,women,gays} are garbage, they shouldn't have rights, and I don't want them to exist".
Does he say that?
I can see that my definition of "hate speech" is much, much broader than yours, however. So it will only be a time-sink for us to try to come to any agreement in the immediate future.
That said, I appreciate your response and will give it some thought.
For example, most people (perhaps including you) feel hatred to many of Hitler's actions during WWII. But I doubt people feel that way due to ignorance or fear of the unknown.
I'm not saying anger is never warranted, but holding onto those feelings and acting on them usually just brings more pain into the world. I'd like to think that The Allies won the second World War not for their hatred of Hitler, but rather for their love of humanity. But maybe I'm being naive.
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” -- Mark Twain
Sorry what?
Yay, election year ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But yeah, my previous comment was referencing Trump directly, not his supporters. I have far more respect for the average Trump voter than I do for Trump himself.
These billionaires don't matter. They don't fund the core advancements that matter, they're just data traders. Even if they pooled all their money it would be dwarfed by real technologists. Not political hucksters and new wall Street aka SV.
Surely, SV is just a cliquey jock and yacht club. Bunch of grandfathered aristocratic rich kids. What a joke.
"Allegations" is maybe the better word here. I hate HRC and I think it's very likely Trump has sexually assaulted at least one woman before, but I also think it's shitty to start a political narrative based on hearsay and the type of empty gloating that lots of men do in private.