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Comment by mattgreenrocks | Hacker News Reader

This is one reason HN is often not-subtly mocked. We condone the behavior by not shutting it down. And the negativity consumes a lot of the air in the room.

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Years ago, I stopped coming here for a fairly long time, because I found all the criticisms to be accurate and off putting. But when I came back after spending that time reading things more on twitter and reddit, I found the experience here incredibly refreshing.

I think it's just that two things are true at once. All the mockery and criticism is accurate, but I think it's also the case that the signal to noise ratio here has remained unusually high for an unusually long period of time. (Probably due to years of tireless thoughtful moderation.)

I don't know. I feel like criticism on HN is usually at least well-founded and obvious dumb takes get downvoted immediately and then we just move on. In my limited experience, reddit and other platforms are much worse. I read HN on my way to work and not my local newspaper because the community is much less toxic.

It's a mixed bag on HN. Reading about some programming-related stuff sometimes convinces me I don't want to talk to other devs anonymously at all because it's an endless well of pedanticism, gripes about people doing it wrong, and really bad takes that serve to ensure discussion remains at a relatively basic level.

>reddit and other platforms are much worse

This can still be like being the skinniest kid at fat camp. If social media in general is bad for your mental health, I don't know if it's a ringing endorsement to be the "least bad for your health."

Fair. I for one enjoy all the technical expertise that's present in the HN hivemind and every time I visit the front page I learn something new. The "mostly software but sometimes a wikipedia article about geology" nature of the platform really strikes a chord with me and I just choose not to read discussions that are 10 layers deep.

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