It feels like HN still upholds the early promise of the internet (along with Wikipedia and very small number of other websites). But what will the next 15 year bring about?
Everyone here would do well to read and understand this essay by Jaron Lanier:
https://www.edge.org/conversation/jaron_lanier-digital-maois...
I also recommend people revisit archives of some high-quality web forums and websites like Geocities. There is a lot of revisionism going on in tech sector right now. Conveniently, it's nearly impossible to challenge in a space where a handful of people can disappear your posts by downvoting and a conversation stays "relevant" only for a few hours.
The same thing does happen to an extent during in person conversations but the barrier for both making a challenging statement and "downvoting" a challenging statement or action is higher.
HN may not be able to actually BE what Web 1.0 was but it seems to make an honest attempt at it in the modern world.
1. Eternal September: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
2. (and what I like to call) Eternal October: https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2000/10/google-launches-sel...
In a billion years, when an alien species reaches earth and sees the ruins of human civilization, somehow one of the last remaining transmissions is that voice, calmly reminding everyone that anything is possible… at Zombocom
The Venture Capitalists and startuppers that made HN like the internet to be Free enough that new businesses and services can thrive, and Open Source for the accessible and reusable building blocks for their projects, but clearly like commercialization and being the middleman, like in the good old offline days. The headache of moderating their platforms feels more urgent than thinking about Freedom of Speech.
The early internet, to me, was the promise to remove those middlemen and have us directly connect, and, while using mostly free and low-overhead websites or services, contribute back. I expected real estate classifieds posted in an open format to open databases by now, and the job description of "real estate agent" retired.
When I think if "upholding" anything I might think of Slashdot clearly preaching Open Source and the Evils of Microsoft. Naive by today's standards but hey, it kept the old ethos alive for a little longer.
Edit: No doubt many other excellent values were upheld by HN and the moderators, so thanks for that!
That should probably be a whole separate post of its own! In fact, I'd encourage you, if you're interested, to consider writing up something on the topic and submit it as a new post. I think there's a lot to dig into with regards to what we all thought the "early promise of the Internet" was, and analyze it in terms of where we were wrong, where we've fallen short of the ideas, and - maybe most importantly - where there's room to take specific action(s) to get "back on the rails" so to speak.
Maybe tech will eventually be commodizided enough to give key infrastructure applications back to the "people". Or maybe the cloud providers will control it all? We'll see.