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Comment by smolder | Hacker News Reader

HN is not what I'd call cancer. Social media doesn't need to be an engagement-obsessed, emotionally charged misinformation hose. Social media is broader than the category that twitter and FB live in. It can be less toxic, but less toxic platforms are less exciting and don't get the same kind of attention, which is what all the toxic stuff optimizes for.

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HN is heavily moderated, which is interesting given how often it is used as a platform to decry censorship.

I don't think that's a contradiction personally. Most reasonable people accept that some level of censorship is necessary for a good discussion, especially when hundreds or thousands of people are involved. HN style moderation doesn't exactly scale to twitter size easily though.

I think OP is pointing out the irony that HN is popular among people who claim to not accept that.

People try to make the argument that Twitter and (maybe to a lesser extent) Facebook are akin to a "town square", whereas I don't think people consider the HN comments section a "town square".

HN as a platform is effectively dedicated to a narrow set of topics, with a largely homogeneous user base (compared to any mainstream social media at least). I don’t think the consensus here is particularly favourable towards free speech, and it certainly has a very narrow Overton Window of acceptable ideas. The user moderation features also heavily reinforce whatever groupthink is popular, you have to “accepted” by accumulating a large amount of karma to influence voting, and 4 in-group users disagreeing with a comment is enough to remove it from the discussion.

I think Dang’s moderation is usually pretty decent, but I really don’t think this is a place where free speech is championed. In any thread on the topic, calls for increased speech regulation seem to be very popular.

I've been lurking on HN for about the last 8 years or so but only a few years ago made an account and I sparsely comment. Only a couple of weeks ago was my account considered worthy of being able to vote down. Meanwhile I've seen users essentially "game" their comment karma to high amounts within a few weeks.

I don't really agree with the idea that this place is an echo chamber, but I do sort of see it as similar to an IT meetup. You generally don't go to an IT focused meetup and start talking about abortion, religion, etc. and nobody would be surprised if you were kindly asked to leave the venue if you insisted on soap-boxing. If someone came and carted you off in a black van for speaking in a public place about your feelings on abortion I'd expect there to be a lot of push back from the public.

Politics is discussed all the time in HN. It’s not a generally taboo topic at all.

I don’t think I’d go as far as saying it’s a full blown echo chamber either. But theres a pretty clear orthodoxy on certain topics here.

I think it's discussed only where it's considered "on-topic". In my experience, many politcal articles are quickly removed as off-topic unless there's some technological bend to it. For example, politics in a thread about Julia 1.7 release would be "off-topic", politics in a thread about net neutrality might be on-topic but only up to a certain degree.

Can you provide specific examples please? It would seem that it moderates trolling content, self promotional or bot level garbage.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

You can also try searching for "please by:dang"

Great examples - social media platforms could do well and follow dang's example.

That in itself makes it more heavily moderated than Facebook or Twitter, though of course that’s also attributable to manageable scale.

Not the OP, but your examples of bot level garbage and trolling content are perfect for Twitter. I would include self promotion, but that is such a core part of social media.

As a long time /lit/-izen I wanted bring up 4chan as an counter-example of a toxic platform that hasn't been optimized for attention. But the longer I thought about it, the more I grew sure that it isn't as toxic as it seems to be. Sure people will respond to your post calling you a bundle of sticks or the n-word. But in the end I had more heart-to-hearts with people that have widly different opinions than on any other platform. Some anon on /wg/ even convinced me to see a therapist about my suicidal-ideation. Hearing that from a voice in the void where there was no karma/likes/hearts/reblogs/etc. attached seemed more genuine, honest and caring than any other "help" I experienced online.

Sure, if you ignore the toxicity then it isn't as toxic as it "seems" to be.

4chan's /pol is probably the largest neo-Nazi discussion forum on the Internet. I'm actually unsure as to what could even be more toxic than that.

HN it's both highly regulated, and focuses on a few niche topics. I can tell you how to create a mobile app using flutter and firebase. I can't tell you how to handle a relationship.

I can argue flutter is easier than react native without getting personal. I don't argue about my relationships, or anyone else's relationships. I have extremely strict criteria for anyone I let into my life, whether that be a friend or a partner. This has worked very well for me.

You're not going to find what you want in every single city, life can become drastically better just by moving.

But that's it. I don't need to argue about why I live where I do.

I don't need the validation of random people when it comes to my life decisions. However if you want to argue with me that I can get better server-side performance via a Rust backend rather than firebase, I might listen.

HN is not for profit. In fact, it's purposely a loss leader. They can afford to be heavily moderated because they aren't trying to appease anyone but their specific small, targeted audience.

It's a marketing and awareness channel for YCombinator, not directly for profit.

It's toxic if you're actually an expert in the subject at hand. People here would rather feel smart than wrong. Lots of armchair experts here touting misinformation but you don't notice it unless there's a topic you know well.

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