Ask HN: How can HN be more addictive than Reddit?

Signal To Noise Ratio. I registered my account on ~2012, but I have been reading HN since 2010, and I didn't participate because the quality of the comment were way too high, and I am not sure if I could make any decent contribution.

And it isn't really HN that is being additive. It is the community, being sensible and professional. It also avoid ( mostly ) all religion and politics debate, or basically things that is hard to argue about Right or wrong. Unless it is something that absolutely needs to be addressed, and the threshold for them seems to be very well managed on HN so far.

You also get huge ( And Surprising ) diversity of professionals on HN. Over the near decade of reading on HN, I have seen Doctors, Medical Research, Oil Refinery, NASA, Nuclear Research Scientist, Tunnel Building Engineers, Professional Musicians, Food Scientist, Chef, Collage Professors, Investment Bankers, Hedge Fund Managers... and a lot more.

I have often wondered, why are they even on HN? They don't speak often on technology related topics, but once you touch on their special subject they offer huge depth of valuable information that goes beyond any normal Internet comment. You will then spend next few hours or even days reading on lots of material before you could even comprehend most of that writing.

Reddit, while being fun, doesn't really have this sense of professionalism.

HN is my “safe place”. Hardly any discussion about politics, religion, or any other topic that no one ever changes their minds about.

I do my part. I flag submissions that are overly political even if I agree with them.

IMHO it's the content that is addictive rather than the gamification mechanisms (though they presumably serve to improve the content)

I haven't found a better source for interesting and relevant links

And then because of HN's popularity you can often find relevant people (such as the author or noted experts) commenting in the threads (as well as the inevitable noise, such as myself)

I think it’s because FOMO is rampant in tech and HN is the most relevant source for it. It offers the best of all the technology, programming and science subreddits combined with high quality news outlets, and it does so with better moderation.

The thing about Facebook, Reddit and other social media’s is that they aren’t all that interesting. You can only look at so many videos of cats before it gets boring, well maybe not cats, but I think you get my meaning. I think we get used to the SoMe news feed, and unless it does something that is actually relevant, it grows stale.

HN does something relevant, or at least something that feels relevant. I’m not sure it’s really build to be less addictive, because adrenaline is a hell of a drug, but it may not be intentionally addictive.

I see a lot of the same on LinkedIn, which is really, really popular among managers. Or twitter and journalists. FOMO is just an amazing way to keep users coming back, even if it isn’t necessarily a positive experience.

I wouldn't consider either HN or Reddit to be addictive.

I guess it depends on a persons mental state though and if they've anything else going on. Lack of friends in 'real' life etc might lead people to over compensate on platforms like this.

A good read on what makes a product addictive is Hooked: A Guide to Building Habit-Forming Products ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hooked-Guide-Building-Habit-Forming... )

Any website that employs a karma system uses a positive feedback loop to encourage continual engagement. That, plus the cultural distaste many here have for the "mainstream", particularly social media, leads some to use HN as their primary, if not only, source for both news and online social interaction.

I would not describe HN (or Reddit as a matter of fact) as addictive.

For me, HN is about the quality of content and quality of the comments on the said content.

It’s almost like no matter how obscure something is, if it’s interesting enough to hit the front page you’ll have at least a couple of people that have deep expertise on it and can give you their honest opinion.

It’s also about discovering things and learning about things you already knew.

HN satisfies the short term dopamine reward circuit for a population that is largely self moderating, monitoring and interested in the same techie type news. So it is self reinforcing and content is continually accruing so you develop an urge to check back in. Email use to be this way for a lot of people, Twitter too, FB definitely, etc...

I think it is because of the comments here that sometimes offer even more value and insight than the linked story and article. Reddit too has some really good comments occasionally but the SNR is high with comments from novelty accounts, "This." , etc.

This could be one of the reasons why people prefer to read news here.

Aside from the expertise represented in the HN crowd, I think another key factor is the self-reinforcing culture Y Combinator managed to build here. The guidelines aren't just some random document, they actually describe the spirit of the place - and the community strongly enforces them. This means that uncivil or contentles comments are unusually rare, which drastically improves the quality of the discussion.

Of course, the system isn't perfect (and regularly leads to the semi-justified claim that outlying opinions aren't welcome here), but on the whole it works very well.

Along the other comments stating that SNR is much higher here than on Reddit, I feel that the lightweightness of HN and the fact that all pages are loaded instantly actually contributes to a state of mind where you want to refresh just to know what's new. When it takes more time to refresh you're not as eager to discover what's new.

Why do you think it is more addictive ? From my experience Reddit's open voting system is much more addicting.

Why? Why make it addictive? Why abuse human nature on what is a website run by adults, for adults, and is doing fine without being turned into a raging nest of wasps?

Go away.

Edit: we have lives to live. I personally avoid addictive shit with vengeance.

I quit smoking, I quit alcohol. I quit facebook. I would quit HN if it ever became “addictive” or anything other than the technology safe harbor i find it to currently be.

Yes, I feel strongly about this.

Can’t really compare HN with all of Reddit. I think Hn is a very good subreddit.

Absolutely no. Hackernews do shadow banning too much.

I wonder morals of this platform quite often.

Freedom of speech... What a joke!