Astroturfing is obviously common in political spaces, whether to normalize certain views, manufacture consensus, or shift public opinion. It seems to me that HN would be a prime target for tech companies to do the same thing, and lately I can't shake the impression that there's a lot of it going on here.
This site might be dying.
So far, it hasn't died nor turned into Reddit.
You mean the negative sentiments that you get when people uncover how big tech/monopolies/government really works ? I guess you would rather read la-la-land stories about the entrepreneurial aces of the 2010s when techies and the general populace were still gullible for that.
I understand that maybe this is not what everyone wants (or understands) from HN, but I do sympathize with the other comment: after visiting HN I'd rather be happy and curious that angered and curious
Depends how you define it. I mean, just because you or the moderators say so doesn't make it true - I've used this site for more than 10 years and I've never seen a higher proportion of political posts nor a higher proportion of blatantly partisan comments on most (not just political) threads.
It isn't like this site would be likely to die in the sense of 0 people visit it, so I'm not sure what you even mean by it dying and have no clue how you'd even measure that. For all you know, most of the commenters are bots - I could be a bot for all you know. But the quality of discourse has definitely become less tech-focused since I first started coming here, and as a Reddit user from early on it very much reminds me of that. Reddit in the beginning was basically to Digg what HN is to Reddit today, and the trajectory is - subjectively to me at least - very similar. What started out as a nerdy tech space slowly over time has and is morphing into political bullshit that never would have made the front page 10 years ago.
Having said that, there's no doubt all these sites have astroturfing issues, and tech in particular tends to have very vociferous users as a rule.
Don't you see how we're propagating the problem here? It would be easy for someone who wants a nerdy tech space to read and discuss the contents of the source article, describing how a new technology might change the experimental process for quantum computing research. Instead we're engaging in political meta-commentary, under an OP comment speculating that "[t]his site might be dying" because they don't like hearing about the company who published it.
The US earned themselves very little goodwill from the world (and many of their own citizen), to the point that people even in the West are happy seeing China challenging the US on the AI front. Whether China is wielding AI for better or worse outcomes than the US is up for hindsight.
The real issue here is the death of critical thinking.
Like, who even use a search engine at this point, let alone pay for it.
If this happens with a minor search engine I'm pretty sure it happens with a lot of other products, starting with AI models.
I'm not abandoning HN, I can come back here to make fun of posts I don't like, post shallow comments, snarky ones, vent my conspiracy theories, complain about the evils that are S, A or E, post my personal anecdotes, advocate for my beliefs which I'm convinced as the only truth. Last but not least, feel smug posting about AI sounding posts. HN is a great place for all of that.
People are burnt twice shy and have become comically cynical. Your discernment has been completely shot.
I still think there is heavier moderation here (the good kind) and more high quality content to be enjoyed than Reddit.