Ask HN: Would you pay for Hacker News? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would you pay for Hacker News?

11 pointsavonmach33 comments

Today? No.

In the past? Maybe.

Hacker news used to be the place you’d come for the cutting edge in technology and entrepreneurship surrounded by interesting people pushing the boundaries day by day.

Nowadays it’s none of that. You no longer stumble upon the bleeding edge and most of the comment section is a wasteland of negativity (pot kettle I know).

It seems to be the natural progression of technical communities. Stackoverflow, /r/programming and now Hacker News.

Sad but I feel the same way. I still enjoy reading HN comments and there are occasional gems among them, but most posts on HN these days reflect the mainstream majority opinion, the same platitudes and topics over and over again. It's not people at the forefront of new technology. I guess it's the "crossing the chasm" effect.

I don't know any better place though. I find myself using specific small subreddits more and more recently even though I was never a big reddit user in the past.

Maybe it’s a reflection of the industry as a whole? Or maybe these communities are elsewhere now.

I don't know that it's none of that, it does seem to still be full of Smartest People In The Room

Where is the new frontier?

It doesn't yet exist, and the old world is gone, same with so many professional magazines (RIP Dr. Dobb's). Enjoy the transitory period.

Sad.

The first years after it started, probably. The last five years or so? No.

Not because there's any change to the site, but because technology has become a ghost town. There are no interesting startups; there's no interesting, burgeoning software technology. It's all tumbleweeds and boarded-up store fronts.

What would be an example of interesting startups in the past?

Not OP but Dropbox for example was unique and game-changing when it showed up.

I agree with OP that nothing interesting like that has shown up in years. It's all "we're gonna make your kubernetes better" now and hardly anything that makes an actual impact on your daily life as an individual.

I think there are plenty of startups right now that will be gamechanging in hindsight. No code/low code startups, for instance, could be some of them.

Yeah but even dropbox got negative comments here. You never know which startup is interesting unless you see it in action

Ok, good point

The most interesting one of last year was Clubhouse. It's so disappointing to go through Product Hunt now and find the best thing out there is a calendar appointment app with less friction or some replacement for Excel, which does a niche thing well but only works on Google Chrome and is slow af.

I already pay enough in terms of time, productivity and sanity.

Probably not. It would be somewhat backwards in my opinion. The community members of this site are in many ways performing a crowd-sourcing think-tank for new ideas, business ventures, etc.. even if at times it does not appear that way and sometimes strays deep into rabbit holes.

No. Some of the content is really interesting but not enough to justify paying. And the discussions in my opinion aren’t that much better than Reddit. A few very insightful comments otherwise people censoring opinions and get border line personal attacks over differences in opinions.

No. Due to the moderation and flagging dynamics, this place is an echo chamber and it wouldn't be worth it for me.

No. The moment one needs to pay for HN, an alternative "free" HN would emerge... so why would I pay?

Besides, the authors of HN are already getting paid for this site (e.g., HN is world-wide known by almost every developer out there, startup founders wannabes consider PG a god, etc.)

I'd allowed tech related advertisers to bid on sponsored post, maybe one per hour. So for example, if you pay $1,000 you get to have your website advertised at the top of the page for an hour, and this would of course go up depending on how many people are trying to buy the space

I used to pay for it back when it was printed and came in the mail.

Yes. HN is a breath of fresh air, one of the last places on the Internet governed by the merit of content and discussion. I would pay just to support it (not that it needs it, I think).

No fucking way

No, the community would become significantly more insular if it was paid only. I also don't think I could afford it, honestly.

Yes, it would improve discussion quality

Any closed community ends up as a cult, derangement reinforced through the circular patting on the backs. HN already got a bit of a loony reputation (for example, see the comment about being a think tank), and it’ll get even worse behind a paywall.

If they paywalled HN, I would finally be free from this place.

If you wait a paid forum, The Well still exists.

No.

I would pay, but I don't think it would be the same if it had a paywall.

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