Ask HN: Does HN customize front page content per-user?

2 points·bubblecheck··4 comments

Hi, does Hacker News front page customize content per user? For instance using fingerprinting such as IP addr, user agent, etc., to show articles directly targeted at the visitor based on inferred identity.

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That seems counter-productive and simple to disprove. I've done four tests:

* Grabbed the official RSS feed¹ via `curl`.

* Opened the front page in Safari with Private Relay² turned on.

* Opened the front page in a Chromium browser.

* Opened the front page on a phone, through cellular.

All showed the same content. Plus, you can revisit the front page of other days³. So either they don’t personalise the front page or they’d need to go to great lengths to conceal it (perhaps targeting specific users).

¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/rss

² https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212614

³ https://news.ycombinator.com/front

Thanks for your investigation.

Yes, I've seen defcon presos on this topic. It wouldn't take great lengths to do so for specific users, if desired. Doing so would be relatively trivial.

Proving a negative (i.e. disproving the claim) here is essentially impossible. Yet, without evidence there's simply no reason to make such an assertion.

Personally, I trust HN and doubt they have any such functionality in place. Even so, can @dang or anyone confirm/deny?

@mentioning doesn’t work, but via email there’s a fair chance you’ll get a reply: hn@ycombinator.com

Not so far as I know.

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