Hacker News Reader

Comment by moreira | Hacker News Reader

I think it might just be that that’s not needed anymore.

The social networks of the past were useful as a way to keep in touch with people. MySpace, early Facebook, and the countless others from back then. Now everyone’s online 24/7, and accessible on multiple services all at the same time, all the time. You don’t need social networks to keep in touch with anyone anymore, their original raison d'être is gone.

What’s sought after now is meeting -other-, new, like-minded people and content. For that we have twitter, Reddit, TikTok, and whatnot. People want their bubbles. We’re all here on HN for that exact purpose.

View on HN

> People want their bubbles. We’re all here on HN for that exact purpose.

100% disagree. I'm here to find ideas I disagree with and tell people how they're wrong. I'm not looking for an agreeable experience here. I'm also here to learn about new tech.

I 100% disagree with your idea that you, or anyone for that matter, is just here to disagree with other people’s ideas. Nobody disagrees with stuff just for the sake of disagreement. Who would do such a thing?

Don’t bother answering that question though because you’d be wrong.

Oh I'm sorry, is this a five minute argument, or the full half hour?

> Oh I'm sorry, is this a five minute argument, or the full half hour?

It's abuse.

I have a feeling that a lot of people replying to you completely missed what you were doing with your comment. That's a shame, because well done.

This isn't an argument, it's just contradiction!

No it isn't.

I feel like I’m watching you cosplay what I see 20 times a day on Reddit and why I’ve increasingly stopped browsing it.

You're not wrong. But, you're not right either.

Neither of you aren't not wrong.

Everyone is wrong, we live in a wonderful world where everyone can be wrong.

They can't both be not wrong.

I disagree, but I can't agree either. Do we have a deal?

I was going more for getting the classic response, from the old story:

Two men disagree and they bring a local wise man to listen to them. He listens to the first guy making his case, and tells him:

- You're right.

The other guy protests: Hey, here my side too. So the wise man listens to his side of the story too, and then tells him:

- You're right.

A bystandander witnessing this scene then calls out to the wise man:

- They can't both be right!

And the wise man says:

- You're right, too!

So true, reb Tevye.

the right word is "irrelevant".

> I 100% disagree with your idea that you, or anyone for that matter, is just here to disagree with other people’s ideas. Nobody disagrees with stuff just for the sake of disagreement. Who would do such a thing?

You must be new here.

Either that, or you are, having apparently missed the obvious irony (mostly in the sentence you didn't quote)...

Comprehending nuance isn't one of your strong points, is it?

It's ok I'm perfectly ok with my old ance.

It's spelled "newance". ;)

Bubbles don't need to be harmful. HN is a bubble. There are ideas that are not allowed here. There are other ideas that are explicitly promoted. This is the value proposition of HN. You are free to go elsewhere to get other perspectives or interactions. This is as it should be.

> There are ideas that are not allowed here.

It would be more accurate to say that some ideas require more work here. The reasons why are open to debate.

Here's an HN bubble aspect.

You can't use any title you want, for example, they will regularly edit the title and thus effectively change the general meaning of the submission as read by most folks who just skim titles. Which has the knock on effect of making the post less (or more) desirable for users to read/upvote.

For example titles starting with "How I ..." are auto stripped to "I ..." there are quite a few other similar auto editorial changes.

There is no way round this that I know of, so those parts of an idea are non-negotiable and not re-workable.

I have seen instances where this practice completely ruins an otherwise excellent submission that would have been #1 on HN in days of old.

I'm not convinced the title rules on HN are having a major impact on which stories get upvotes on a frequent basis, but that's just my intuition and you may be massively right.

In which case I urge you to, when you see an example where you think the policy has indeed had a negative effect (which I'd also suggest isn't quite as basic as "did it lower the expected number of upvotes" but also "and not because it removed clickbait from the title"), either comment mentioning dang's name and saying why you feel that, or send him an email to the same effect (hn@ycombinator.com)

Not only have I often seen him engage in discussion and be open to changes for a submission when people felt a title shouldn't exactly fit HN's usual rules, but I'd also expect him to be open to changing the rules themselves if your feedback leads to his agreeing that there's a trend of submissions having the meaning of their title unfairly changed due to the generally good rules.

All that said, it's not really an example of a "HN bubble", nor of an "idea" that isn't allowed on HN.

Super helpful reply, thanks! I'm not on the site too much these days but will send any that I notice!

If someone did a show HN, for their murder for hire app to connect assains to clients, i imagine it would (rightly) go over poorly.

At least i would hope...

Unless they wrote it in Rust, in which case it would be received with great praise

Very funny...

But have you considered the countless lives that were lost due to bugs from memory-unsafe languages over the past ~70 years? A murder-for-hire app in Rust would still cost us less lives overall, if it increases the popularity and adoption of memory-safe languages elsewhere. It's a just cause, one could say.

I, for one, am very happy with how the assassination story of Rust is coming along!

Rust has rusted all of your brains. It really does what its name says!

I mean it makes sense. Memory safety >> Human Safety.

I think it would actually probably hit the top spot if it was a legitimate attempt that used crypto, E2E, provable security, maybe TOR. There's only one example in history AFAIK and it only lasted a short while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market

Depends, did they write the website in PHP?

People have a lot of sympathy here for Silk Road, which was in this business.

Silk road was primarily in the drug business not the murder for hire business. Drug deregulation is a pretty popular view at hn.

There are definitely ideas that are not allowed here.

I’m not sure there are ideas that aren’t allowed so much as the way you speak, structure, and present them. I’ve tested many different ideas on topics here and some have received far more positive feedback than I’d imagine and some have been buried too.

I think so long as you follow guidelines generally and don’t outright attack individuals then you’re mainly ok. The community might downvote your idea to invisible but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t allowed - just that not enough people thought it was good. That’s fair.

>The community might downvote your idea to invisible but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t allowed

This might be a nitpick, but this depends on your POV of who's allowing/disallowing content.

HN itself allows a lot of comments that the collective HN community does not allow -- by downvoting them into invisibility.

Right, but I do think there’s a general fairness. It isn’t as biased one way or another as any places I feel.

I can't think of any non-rulebreaking comments that would get you banned just for expressing a distasteful idea. Can you give some examples?

“non-rulebreaking” implies that there are rules stating that certain ideas are not allowed.

No it doesn't. The rules can be based around the effort, structure, and tone of your comments. Not the ideas expressed within them. I think the only "idea" not allowed is asking for violence and I've even seen those allowed.

Politics as a subject is strongly discraged on HN.

It isn’t about Republican, Democrat, or Libertarian ideas it’s about their red button talking points. So you can discuss say taxes or abortion as long as you don't bring politics into it or get repetitive.

What most often confuses people is you can get heavily downvoted or upvoted for expressing the same idea depending on who shows up to a given discussion about say Nuclear power, Bitcoin, etc.

No I can't, because my account would get banned. Probably under the pretext of the stated rule, "Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies, generic tangents, and internet tropes."

Those seem to be based around the relationship of the comment to the post it is in rather than any specific idea in the comment itself. As if any comment flagged for those reasons could have the same idea expressed in a relevant post and not be flagged.

That is what the text of the rules say, but not how they actually operate.

I tried to give you an answer. It only took about 90 seconds for my post to get deleted.

The ideas that break the rules.

There aren't any ideas that break the rules though. Just structure, tone, and context of comments/posts.

I don’t think that’s true.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32432564

Trying expressing certain looked down upon ideas politely and with a good structure, gentle tone, and within context, and see how far you go...

@dang has been explicit that they deem certain topics “inherent flame wars” and ban discussion because it upsets people.

Certain ideas aren’t allowed here — even when calmly stated and cited with evidence.

For example, citing the clip of the BLM founder saying she’s a “trained Marxist” would get you banned: HN was in flat out denial, even though it was her own words on film [1]. She is literally answering a question about the ideology behind BLM.

Unfortunately, that kind of censorship enabled BLM to commit the fraud they did [2].

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM5zUwiCTzw

[2] - https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/amazon-boots-black-l...

What's hilarious is that this is still up three hours after posting with not even a reply. So much for censorship. You're totally allowed to post that here, even while conflating one charity with a continent-wide protest movement, one leader's out of context quote with the goals of that movement, and one enforcement action by Amazon Smile with an accusation of "fraud".

For those interested in whether there's any truth in those links (there is! though maybe not nearly as juicy as promised), Wikipedia has a great overview as always: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter_Global_Netw...

It was flagged and dead almost immediately then zmgsabst made another post [1] linking to the dead post and someone vouched for the dead post you see here.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32432791

Maybe because it's relevant to the discussion in the thread.

How many other times do you think it'd be appropriate to bring up the same topic? Probably very few, and it would get deleted if not.

Ignoring or de-facto shadow-banning is also a form of censorship.

I’ll keep saying it. Nobody has a right to an audience. Ignoring something isn’t censorship.

Shouldn't I get to decide what I ignore?

Again, ignoring and censoring aren't the same thing.

Part of the reason I come to HN is that I know there are entire classes of content and ideas that I will not be exposed to at all so I don't have to waste brain cycles on sorting them.

Similarly I use a spam filter on my email.

If I wanted to provide a similar experience, targeting a different narrative, and then worked to create my own safe platform, would you disagree with that?

"Ignoring" is just choice. And that concept can either promote or extinguish fair and free communication.

I assume you and I share similar political beliefs. Call it censorship, or call it "choice", it ia clear today not all people have fair and free access.

If the government uses its power to extinguish speech (or to burden channels through unfair promotion of counter ideas), then that is censorship. And that is a problem we should all want to fix.

The "trained Marxist" phrase is so strange to me - how does one become 'trained' in Marxism? Trained in guerilla warfare, perhaps. But to be trained in Marxism has the same meaning as being "trained in Platonism" or "trained in Hayekism". The other answers she gave in the interview also indicate to me that she doesn't really know what she's talking about, and is using this language either as a LARP to claim some theoretical legitimacy or basis, or as a way to attract on-the-fence old school Marxists.

At no point did any of this 'trained Marxism' show other than in a small handful of the organization's goals, generally the most neglected ones.

To add to that, stating the fact that one of the tech titans of today, Bill Gates, was in cahoots with a convicted pedophile is either met with "this is just hearsay!" or "you're jumping to conclusions", when it's not ignored and down-voted altogether.

Even more important (not that many of us receiving our wages and dividends from probably pedophiles isn't important), the strong connection between Silicon Valley of days past, and, most importantly, from today, with the Military and Security Complex is also shunned.

> the strong connection between Silicon Valley of days past, and, most importantly, from today, with the Military and Security Complex is also shunned.

Whole valley at one time was off limits to anyone from the Soviet Block.

And of course that The Economist just published this article in their latest issue: "After a long break-up, Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex are getting back together" [1] . Maybe I should submit it as a dedicated post.

[1] https://www.economist.com/business/2022/08/08/can-tech-resha...

It depends on what the bubble is about. If it's for a specific anime who cares but politics is a bubble whose influence exits the bubble

Honestly I have no interest in discussing politics. It’s the social media of conversation.

I prefer to talk to people about what interests them. Sometimes it is interesting. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes I agree with them. Sometimes I don’t. With most people all four are true. I form my own opinions from there. They change frequently. I vote based on my best current mental model.

I try to shake that up from time to time. It is nice to see the other side of the discussion. Groupthink is not something to strive for.

I’m not striving for groupthink. I’m seeking out a trusted (collective) voice.

Some ideas are objectively sick regardless of the forum.

A bubble can be less about topics and more about how we communicate - if I ask about sources on HN I'll get links and pdfs in return. If I do that on reddit, I'll get insults.

HN has broad tolerance for a lot of ideas - and a lot of subgroups exist here that don't exist on other platforms. No matter what you believe, someone on HN holds a counter view and can probably give you a good debate about it.

There might be some "Three or so core values are enough" pattern being played out in relatively good success here. E.g. respond to a favorable or valliant interpretation of a post, bring in new data and information and references, leave the place better than you found it. Then maybe a few emergent rules of etiquette.

You want an audience for your disagreements and maybe to cause a rise in people (trolling). But that's not fun for the audience which is why a lot of communities become insular bubbles to keep the annoyers away.

Maybe, but you want to have your disagreements with the people that typically frequent HN about topics that are typically discussed on HN.

That may be true, but I doubt you’re actually too interested in people with completely different interests. Just like utilitarians and deontologists might be interested in finding and talking with each other but not someone who is wholly uninterested in ethics as a simple example.

Nice way to describe your taste in bubbles.

Is HN the digital equivalent of going to a bar looking for a fight?

No, it’s not. And you better be shut up about it if you know what’s good for you, pardner.

This honestly made my day. LOL

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/386/

> You don’t need social networks to keep in touch with anyone anymore, their original raison d'être is gone.

In what sense? The underlying social motivation/interest is still present. And it's not like fundamental communications capabilities have actually changed. Chat's been around since the 90s and SMS is the new email. And social network applications grew and thrived in those situations because pull-and-scan-social-feed across multiple circles has some distinct effort-reward profiles.

I could see the argument that the algorithmic and advertising imposition eventually drive out enough of the value that people opt out, but that's a statement about the business lifecycle of a social network app, not the underlying reason people might use / like them.

Chat has not been around since the 90s, not in the form that is used today.

Now that I think about it, this is correct on at least one front: I can recall chat systems that existed in the 80s.

What's the feature of today's chat systems makes them qualitatively different from those that are 30+ years old?

Today's chat systems are far more accessible to people with minimal to no technical background. Install an app on your phone and you're good to go. Almost anyone can and does use them.

The level of technical knowledge required to connect to IRC or a BBS in the 80s was far higher, which meant that only a tiny fraction of people bothered.

Chat definitely existed in the 80's.

One of my first childhood memories was my brother showing me a real-time chat with someone in Germany. It was 1982. The letters appeared one... by... one... on the screen. It was probably a subconscious part of why I went on to study German later.

Also everyone has smartphones that they bring around literally everywhere they go all the time, no dynamic of signing out.

Part of that is increased accessibility, but I think the larger part is increased technical background. If I kidnapped a computer scientist from the 1960s and locked them in a room with a smartphone (turned off), it might be a while before they posted their first meme. Now almost everyone accepts that they need to learn how to use a smartphone, while the in 80s/90s it was very possible to live life without touching a computer or mobile phone.

In any event, the fact that chat programs are different or more common now doesn't mean they didn't exist in the 80s and 90s. IRC is and was chat as much as Slack or Discord are.

on my university mainframe in the 1980s it was as simple as logging in and typing 'forum'.

had most of the basic features of IRC.

The point is that today you are always online on your phone. Whatsapp, Viber or Messenger always work. No need to log onto a mainframe and type forum.

I feel that the point made is a good one. Given that we can share what we want directly via instant messengers that everyone has "turned on" all the time, value proposition of Facebook drops dramatically. Anything you want to share you can share directly and immediately get it to whoever you want to see it.

The ability to fit them comfortably into a pocket.

emojis?

It didn't have emojis or videos back then, but otherwise it hasn't changed much.

No, we had ascii art and point to point file sharing (DCC).

Agreed, the closest thing to filling that general keeping in touch for me is WhatsApp groups (other group chat apps are available). In my social group that's where pics get shared, things get organised and general life updates go. Groups form quite naturally along lines that mirror real life and groups fall apart and people move on as they do in real life.

Facebook had a short lived glory when we were all open with ourselves. But inevitably it wasn't long before the issues came. Someone posts a pic on a night out with some friends and another mutual friend gets upset they weren't invited. That creepy friend of a friend starts liking all your bikini pics. The nice friend of a friend starts posting attention seeking stuff that makes you like them a bit less. Family politics get aired in public.

People shared less of their lives and except for a few egotists there isn't much of that old genuine content we all loved. It's all content aggregation filler now.

Chat groups allow for keeping in touch but allows us to those groups like the 'No Homers Club'

That was exactly my assertion from couple of weeks ago [1]

In India WA does an excellent job of being that social graph. There are segregated groups of family, colleagues, collage friends and what not. Messages, memes, updates are shared on those groups. Lot of commercial transactions also take place. So Facebook usage has dropped significantly. Of course WA is owned by FB.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32274785

Social networks aren't that important to stay connected. In countries where there's still load shedding or shitty internet, people connect via whatsapp and gmail and you'll see advertising signs and paint on buildings and even cargo ships that just contain a whatsapp number and a gmail address.

That's their form of the internet, because everything else won't even load with speeds less than 100kBit/s.

Also: Whatsapp somehow works on dumbphones. I don't know how (yet) but there's apps for KaiOS, Samsung Bada and other old phones. I wonder if vendors reverse engineered the APIs and implemented their own clients.

> Also: Whatsapp somehow works on dumbphones. I don't know how (yet) but there's apps for KaiOS, Samsung Bada and other old phones. I wonder if vendors reverse engineered the APIs and implemented their own clients.

How "dumb" are those dumbphones? I ask because since around 2002 (prior to smartphones), some phones allowed apps to be downloaded. From around 2005, most phones supported downloadable apps, written by third parties.

They were called "midlets", written in Java, and I wrote a few of them myself.

I’d go further - it’s not just that we don’t need a way to ‘connect’ with people on a platform today (you can ping them in myriad ways).

It’s that we don’t much want to anymore.

The novelty of general-purpose social networking was twofold, in order depending on your circumstances at the time:

- a new angle to seeking a mate

- wow, a way to see what someone you don’t really know anymore is up to and say hi

The former market opportunity is now filled by specialist apps.

The latter, while it was fun for a while, and might still hold some prospect for thrills, is nothing to build a business around.

> What’s sought after now is meeting -other-, new, like-minded people and content. For that we have twitter, Reddit, TikTok, and whatnot.

yeah, but meeting people there isn't really meeting people. the friends you have on those aren't real friends. you can stay in touch with a friend on social media, but if your friendship is only there it's only pretend.

Reddit is often great for reading nifty content, but the infantile, monoculture avatars turn me off from ever wanting to 'connect' with anyone.

I like my bubbles on reddit because I have a lot of niche interests. Geography, airplanes, retro computers, 1980's toys and cartoons. Reddit is great because there are multiple subreddits for these things. It's great that after 30+ years of never meeting someone who liked maps as much as I do I can share and discuss strange maps and talk about toys from my childhood.

>What’s sought after now is meeting -other-, new, like-minded people and content. For that we have twitter, Reddit, TikTok, and whatnot.

None of those sites are good for that any more. All the interesting people on reddit have been banned. No one sane uses twitter. And finding people to talk to on tiktok is plain impossible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com