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Comment by ptero | Hacker News Reader

HN is still the best tech news site for me and discussions on what I consider general topics on HN are better than on any social media site.

Unfortunately it is consistently getting worse. 10 years ago a message would only be mass-downvoted for tone, but never for specific opinion expressed or defended. So HN would be a place for interesting discussions without flamewars.

Not anymore. Now I seldom bother posting opinions on touchy topics that are against the "SF bay mainstream" view -- no point of wasting time it the post gets hidden in minutes. On other topics it is still a good discussion place where one doesn't have to fear expressing a minority opinion. My 2c.

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I'm sure there are some HN users who just downvote everything they disagree with. However, I also think commenters with “minority opinions” need to realize that the onus is on them to justify what they say.

A comment which says “the earth is round” does not and should not need to justify that position. Most of the community already thinks the earth is round, so commenters don't need to spend time explaining why.

By contrast, a comment which claims “the earth is flat” had better damn well include why the earth is flat, and that argument had better be pretty convincing! Who knows, perhaps the flat-earthers were right all along and one of them will open my eyes some day—but the onus is on them.

To take a more realistic example, I’ll sometimes see HN comments which are (in my estimation) based on the premise that government is inherently evil. Perhaps this is just an accepted truism in conservative circles, but it's not in mine, nor is it something I believe. So if I see a comment which assumes "all governments are bad" as a starting point, I will likely downvote it!

(Please, let's not turn this thread into a discussion on the merits of government, I just needed a real-world example.)

My goal is to downvote stupid arguments and upvote constructive ones, regardless of whether I agree—but due to the above, the two end up being correlated in practice.

Something I've often seen on HN (and really, all forums) is a problem similar to the X-Y problem.

For example, someone might say "Video games are a waste of time!", and people will try to defend them, citing examples of games that require a lot of thought, or tell an amazing story, etc., but they respond with things that just feel like non-sequitors, and it's only after a dozen comments or so that we REALLY find out that the original commenter feels that all forms of entertainment are a waste of time, and that everybody should spend all their waking hours either being productive or learning something.

You really think so? I think discussion and moderation is consistently good. Perhaps the 'SF bay mainstream' is more just a reflection of the HN audience in general?

I do. Before (in PG's times) one could express an unpopular view and folks would jump in en masse to refute it on merits. Posts in a lively discussion would not get downvoted for content that doesn't fit a narrative.

Now minority opinions, even rationally expressed are just downvoted, which discourages writing them at all.

I think HN is slowly losing ability to have a discussion with people who hold different views. Now it is "my votes are stronger than your votes". Which is sad. Mt 2c.

I don’t know the numbers, but I suspect between the PG era and now, the size of this community has increased by at least an order of magnitude. Probably a lot more.

For sure things have evolved, but this site and community is still working afaict. I suppose it depends on what minority opinions you’re referring to.

I don't have an opinion about the evolution of the community, other than that it is larger, but moderation on HN is 1,000x better than it was before the Dan era: it's much more transparent, and it's much less capricious

I can't downvote yet (and will probably start over when I can[0]) but when I have in the past I reserved downvotes for comments made in bad faith (straw/steelmanning, etc).

I will admit I would sometimes feel compelled to downvote minority opinions instead of refuting them. On some subjects (eg abortion), I have seen the same opinions and arguments made for decades. I'm tired of seeing the same poorly thought out arguments again and again and again and again.

However I try to hold back and just ignore those comments these days. (Not always successfully..)

0: I use HN exclusively on mobile and the downvote button is too easy to press accidentally, so the privilege is actually a curse.

You can now. I looked at your profile. I'm impressed. You got to downvoting capability in 51 days. It took me like 12 years. Of course, I left HN for like 3 years, but still!

The internet is overwhelmingly filled with low quality tribalism, and one common format is "woe is me, the rational conservative underdog, shouted down and censored by the evil West coast elites", and of course the many politically reversed examples. I think people on HN are understandably jumpy about keeping that kind of stuff off HN, even though they may jump the gun sometimes and unfairly lump in things that merely smell like that, and aren't necessarily going in that direction yet.

And, while your observation probably does correspond with the political direction that such action leans, I've seen tons of cases of what I think are "jump the gun" downvotes from both directions.

The internet is overwhelmingly filled with echo chambers. And there was, earlier, a special care taken for HN to avoid this fate and create a site where minority views can be debated. PG wrote a lot about the need to allow and protect non-standard opinions even if we sometimes find them uncomfortable. This view influenced choices at the earlier HN.

Such content does not have to rise to the top of the page -- posts bubble down quickly in the absence of upvotes. But if, when it does (because enough people were interested in reading and commenting on it), it gets killed by flagging instead of a debate on merits we nudge HN in the direction of becoming yet another echo chamber. And a path toward becoming another echo chamber on the internet leads to a quicker irrelevance than most contributors realize. My 2c.

The problem is the double standard. It's only ever conservatives who are criticized for this kind of pointless politicking and tribalism, while it goes unchallenged from the other side.

No, it's not only conservatives who are criticized. You just notice it when they are. Your brain has a finite capacity for keeping score on this kind of stuff; this is one of the tricks it plays on you to keep you from being anxious about that.

Interesting that this comment has two replies:

yours: "they aren't criticised more, this is bias of observation on your part"

other comment: "that's b/c they are more tribal!"

Observation bias exists, but that doesn't mean there isn't a moderation bias, one way or another. However, I think the distinction of "conservative" is maybe a red-herring - it invites tribalism.

As an example, I think people refusing to wear mandated COVID masks are provocative/incorrect. I also believe the authorities (gov and media/corps) are incorrect, and actively biasing scientific discourse.

So, is my opinion conservative, or not?

Why is it "interesting" that two people have different opinions? It sounds like you're doing that thing where somebody points at one ostensible counterexample with a bit of snideness ("You say global warming is real, but there's a historic snowstorm outside. How interesting."), but I could be misinterpreting.

I'm not sure how inciting a GW myth is at all relevant.

It's interesting b/c someone who appears anti-conservative also agrees, implicitly, that conservatives are represented as more tribal on HN. But that person shouldn't be affected by pro-conservative observation bias (unless they are pro-conservative despite thinking of them as tribal).

I don't know what you're asking, but my reply isn't ideologically specific. It applies just as well to liberals. I'm specifically not saying either side is more tribal; I'm saying that we have cognitive biases that make us sensitive to corrections of opinions we agree with, and insensitive to corrections of opinions we disagree with.

But you didn't say there might be cognitive bias.

You stated there was, and implied there is no such bias on HN? I'm not so sure.

My question was to imply - there may be talking points, or "biases" considered conservative/liberal, but this is an ambiguous thing. Often, full perspectives are a mixture of both, but people might still be censored on the "perception" of their tribe, or on individual points. As such, the perceived tribes are not a useful distinction to make.

I just told you what I meant.

Conservatives get criticized for tribalism more than the left because they're simply so much more tribal.

All you have to do is look at how many Trump flags you still see compared to Biden flags.

Also, believe or not, the far left dislikes Biden.

Agreed - the accusation of tribalism may be unfairly over-applied in many cases, like most political criticisms, but, also like many political criticisms, it is extrapolated from an opinion that is more reasonable (regardless of whether it is definitely true), which is that conservatives have, on par, too much party loyalty, and liberals have, on par, too little party loyalty.

> and liberals have, on par, too little party loyalty.

My knee-jerk reaction is "this is a good thing", but this is wrong.

The left's lack of party loyalty costs us elections. The farther left hates the "Vote blue no matter who" mantra, which allowed Trump to win 2016. The right votes red no matter what because they think every democrat is a socialist.

Downvoting on HN has become irrational. Perfectly innocuous, factual statements now get downvoted. Harmless opinions get downvoted. Personal experiences get downvoted. Not because the commentator has said something untrue, not because the commentator is expressing hate or encouraging violence: just that the commentator said something that someone doesn’t like.

As a result, I now spend much more time delivering upvotes to downvoted comments. It’s a pain in the ass, because I have to log in to do it, and I’d much rather remain logged-out because it hides all the crap that dang has to deal with.

Downvotes don't feel much different to me than they did in the beginning, but HN is definitely much busier now, and voting can only ever be probabilistically accurate, so you're much more apt to see a janky vote now than you were in 2009. Give it time; the votes usually even out.

I agree, but I don't think this is a reflection of the website as much as it is a reflection of society as a whole. A society becoming less tolerant of opinions counter to those which the mainstream media spin. Cancel culture is a phenomenon which really does trickle down to individuals and their behaviour, both online and in real life. In the past you could agree to disagree, but not anymore it seems.

I agree to disagree a lot, but it may not be obvious. I just stop replying. I suspect I'm not the only one. I guess I could reply and say "agree to disagree" but it sort of feels like an empty gesture. Plus, back in my day, sending that to a Usenet group or mailing list: that's a paddlin'.

> In the past you could agree to disagree, but not anymore it seems.

On the other hand (or in the same vein?), nowadays it seems like people pick-and-choose their "facts" far more liberally than ever. So many choose to believe something and it becomes their truth, through ever increasing echo chambers and whathaveyou. Or maybe they're just more vocal about it, I don't know. It's just a trend I've noticed.

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