Hacker News Reader

Comment by hk__2 | Hacker News Reader

> What are the motivations for people to be daily activate users these days? Honestly just curious.

Why do you go on HN? That may be the beginning of a response since HN is a social platform.

An excellent query, as it neatly encapsulates the only response to the original post.

People tend to view every other social media platform negatively except for the one they personally use, and they're prepared to staunchly defend their choice no matter what.

On the contrary, I’m always hating on Twitter, which is my primary social platform. I’m just addicted to it.

one of the biggest reasons it persists, even after all of the chaos.

a fair amount of the customers would have to go to rehab to successfully leave.

that isn’t judgement. just facts.

I have honestly never met anyone who would defend hacker news or reddit as a good use of their time or pressure their peers to use the platforms more.

Are we saying that all social media platforms are the same? Are there teams working on the hacker news platform trying to tweak the algorithms to drive addictive user engagement? Is the sorting algorithm not a matter of public record?

Correction to my original comment, I am asking about Instagram / Facebook / Twitter.

I know why I (maybe we) go on HN and its because Im bored and weak and Ive never felt manipulated by it or addicted to it or wanted to be on it for more than 15 minutes.

I have chores I should be doing.

> I honestly haven't come across anyone who would advocate for Hacker News or Reddit as a productive use of their time.

Really? I actually encounter such individuals quite frequently, even if it's more subtly expressed through statements like, "Hey, did you catch that discussion on HN about X? You should check it out!"

> Are we implying that all social media platforms are indistinguishable?

In the sense that they all harbor pseudonymous individuals often baiting one another and getting embroiled in futile online conflicts aimed solely at boosting egos (even our current exchange is not exempt from this and I am guilty of it)?

Yes, I believe that's a valid assessment of virtually every social media platform.

Me and my friend found our jobs through HN, and the HN common cultural context helped me in that job. It's definitely a value add for my life

> Are we saying that all social media platforms are the same?

Nobody is saying that.

> Are there teams working on the hacker news platform trying to tweak the algorithms to drive addictive user engagement?

Driving addictive user engagement has little to do with being a social media platform, see Netflix for example.

> Is the sorting algorithm not a matter of public record?

Again, that’s irrelevant. Twitter is more open-source than HN.

> I am asking about Instagram / Facebook / Twitter.

I find Instagram pretty valuable, and I've tried to create a habit of going on it every day or two for 15-20 minutes (I have to exert effort to do this). I have close friends now scattered around the world, and one of the best ways (per unit of time) for me to keep up with everyone is to check out their posts/stories, send some kind of DM commenting on their activities, and post a story of my own. Then when we do end up talking on the phone I feel like I know what they've been up to.

I'm a lot more fond of forums (like this) than media like twitter, facebook, instagram where it's more about "maintaining a persona". On a forum it would theoretically be about conversation and almost never about the person per se.

Oh, I see that game being played quite a lot around here as well.

If you think HN is less fake than Facebook as far as personas goes that is probably more about your Facebook feed - HN is more homogeneous, certainly, but you don't become cultured because you've build a country club and everyone puts on a fancy accents inside.

On a side note, HN is the place person matters more than anywhere I can think of except for YouTube. Is it possible you feel like that because it's closer to your person/ingroup?

Do you read comments differently depending on which username posts them? I usually don't. That's the kind of personal I mean.

I certainly don’t, and hacker news has a certain conversational feng shui that leads to most posts reading a lot like everyone else’s. If you read through the top 10 comments on any post, the style will be extremely similar on 9+ of them, which is nice because that way you don’t end up with anyone caring who the other guy is, anyway, you just want to read what people have to say

I tend to view all platforms negatively because I am afraid that all are a virtual substitute to actual encounters and debates. They soothe a real need and desire with a sort of hallucinatory satisfaction (human beings are very good at that). Which does tend to create a cycle of addiction or dependency. So by making life more bearable, they also validate and consolidate life as it is. So yeah...

Numerous individuals grapple with contradictory sentiments regarding their engagement with social media, yet persist in using it.

Hacker News isn't an exception in the realm of social media platforms subject to such considerations. It appears that a significant number within this community possess a certain blind spot, often exerting substantial effort to delineate why their favored social media stands apart in some manner from the rest.

> I tend to view all platforms negatively because I am afraid that all are a virtual substitute to actual encounters and debates.

They are not virtual substitute, they are actual debates but through a medium different than voice. Of course, the experience is different, but that doesn’t make it "virtual", just like going to the cinema is not a "virtual substitute" to live theater.

I would argue it is not a social media platform for a few very important reasons.

- No infinite scroll

- No algorithmic content recommendations (ex: if you like X, you'll like Y)

- Highly targeted and moderated content

- The user is not the product (this is maybe the most important and has far reaching consequences)

The user absolutely is the product here, HN is a marketing and recruitment funnel to YC and YC-backed companies.

I could be wrong, but I don't believe HN relies on selling user data like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok does. That is what I meant by that. That dramatically changes the incentives and therefor the experience.

To me, having a profile with some kind of “like” system (karma) makes it social media. The main incentive is to gain upvotes which dramatically changes the way in which users write their thoughts. Even though there’s nothing tying the “real me” to my profile, I still know it’s me and am incentivized to make posts that will garner more votes. SO, Quora, forums etc all count. Only when people are truly anonymous, with no “score” being kept do I believe it doesn’t count.

And most important of all - no push notifications trying to drag you back in all the time.

It does have paging that you can click through to get more articles. I know it's "different" but for someone like a HACKER, pressing the link vs a swipe probably has little differences.

It does use "popularity" and it's gamed - maybe not algorithmic content, but it's still promoting content.

It uses Social media game to upvote/downvote comments, etc. which impacts people's behaviors and group think.

There's such a wide variety of articles on here, and a pretty wide variety of people, too. I'm always suprised by how many non-programmer types are really around here.

The user's not the product? We'll there is targeting of Job ads and such on here for Y-Combinator companies. Probably other things that you just don't know about.

It's just a niche social media company that you happen to really align with. But so are certain Reddits for people, etc.

The one thing it doesn't have here is the distractions with other links (I'm

It's like the old debates abput what "object oriented" or "functional" programming means. We need a list of the major attributes of social media, and then tag each system with its attributes from the list.

Then we can discuss which attributes are good or bad and which attributes interact with some kind of synergy or opposition.

None of the item you listed have _anything_ to do with being a social media platform. Is it a website that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking? Yes, then it’s a social media platform, period.

This is a good example for this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37210298

> People tend to view every other social media platform negatively except for the one they personally use, and they're prepared to staunchly defend their choice no matter what.

Besides, nowadays pretty much any random content website (including newspapers) have infinite scroll, algorithmic content recommendation (btw, content recommendation is algorithmic by definition), untargeted content and ads (= the user is the product) while not always being a social media platform.

Is it the same? There are gamification tactics I'm not a fan of (voting system), but I find the level of discourse on HN to generally be a much higher quality than say, twitter, facebook, instagram (e.g. what we mean when we say social network).

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