Why I’m quitting Hacker News I just shared a post about the world’s oceans setting record temperatures for 80 continuous days. After the post achieved 130+ upvotes and the top spot within several hours, it was nuked. My experience is that every post on Hacker News addressing climate change is removed or downvoted to oblivion. I don’t want to be part of a community that turns away from probably the most important threat facing humanity in the 21st century. Goodbye and farewell! |
I've been doing this myself for many years, often feeling I'm something of an outsider and contrarian, though my status on the leaderboard and as amongst the most prolific HN commenters (ranked 17th in 2021 via an analysis by Whaly in January 2022[1]) suggest my own perception may be inaccurate.
I'm not a YC founder, haven't applied to YC, I'm just a semi-retired techie who's looked for the clue online since the 1980s and am in large part finding it here.
That said...
0. Climate change has been discussed reasonably frequently on HN, more below, and this story specifically.
1. HN's prime directive is "curious conversation on topics of intellectual interest" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36062985[2] Posts don't have to concern startups, or tech, or the Silicon Valley / Bay Area, or the MCU, but any topic which good hackers would find interesting is appropriate.
What HN especially seeks to avoid is religious flamewars. See <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27017470>.
I have a significant concern with these priorities in the specific degree that many Big Problems are in fact Big Problems because their nature, whom they effect, and/or potential resolutions or outcomes, are themselves highly polarising. This is all the more true when these issues align along power axes such as wealth, social status, nationality (including rich vs. poor nation status), and the like. Unfortunately HN's policy here, in my view, tends to additionally penalise the under-privileged viewpoint. I've called for wide latitude in view of this multiple times, it's probably my biggest standing concern with HN moderation. In fairness, sometimes HN mods agree in specific instances, in others they don't.
HN also seeks to preserve the integrity of the site and its community, which is probably the most fraught, and least understood, aspect of moderation. It's disappointing to have your submission killed, flagged off the front page, or simply die in oblivion, and I write from experience. That said, maintaining the discussion dynamic itself takes primacy, and is something that must be nurtured in nuanced and gentle ways. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16135266>.
2. HN strongly deprecates repeat coverage of a single story or issue, especially where the repeats bring little additional information or insight to bear.
3. The warming oceans story was covered a month ago, 77 points, 74 comments: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35747417>. That said, climate change really isn't a single event, and many news organisations struggle with how to present it in the context of standard journalistic frames, much as they do other long-standing and complex issues (race, poverty, inequality, power differentials, and the like). I'd like to see a better option, I'm not sure what these might be.[3]
4. There are topics Hacker News has a great deal of problem discussing sanely. I've violated my own brief / clear / concise advice numerous times raising specific examples or general cases with dang, the head moderator and public face of the mod team (it is, as I understand, a team). Sometimes we disagree, sometimes we agree, almost always I end up with a better understanding of why HN acts as it does, and those reasons are ... reasonably justifiable, even where I disagree with the outcomes. I'm finding that very nearly all my concerns have been long anticipated or recognised by HN itself, see for example Paul Graham's (pg) 2009 essay, "What I've Learned from Hacker News": <http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html> (discussed at the time <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=495053> as well as four years (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19201999>) and one year (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30394474>) ago.
In particular, dang has also occasionally expressed frustrations ... though I'm not surfacing the example I had in mind presently. This one comes close: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689715>
You can review dang's own comments to HN which frequently discuss moderation actions and rationales: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...> This is highly illuminating in my experience. You can also search for specific terms to gain insights concerning decisions.
HN strongly discourages meta discussion. Searching reveals this detailed comment by dang:
A separate meta section would be a disaster—it would create a dedicated place for the problem to metastasize, and the demands on moderation would go up not down. I once had a conversation with the founder of a forum much larger than HN, who told me that creating a meta section in the hope that it would help contain such complaints was the biggest mistake they ever made. ...
... How about we make this into a positive this way: if there's a specific article that you feel was intellectually interesting, and capable of supporting a substantive discussion on HN, and which was flagkilled unfairly, let us know at hn@ycombinator.com.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24902628>
More on meta here:
Meta posts like this one (posts about the forum itself) are addictive: it feels like they're interesting, but actually they are not. They're more like a waste product of the community, consisting of the same half-dozen points over and over. We've learned over the years that such discussions need to be managed like weeds.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17636158>
I've an interest in the concerns over meta-posts at the moment as I've been doing my own analytics into the HN front page from its inception in February 2007, and am contemplating a submission based on what I've discovered, see: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/110437783957361794>. Dang's cautioned me about the meta aspect.
I can share a few findings:
- The HN front-page is a limited resource. There are 30 slots, and with 365 days in a year, 10,950 annual opportunities to make the "past" (<https://news.ycombinator.com/front>) archive of front pages (10,980 in a leap year). That's something of an undercount as more items may appear on the FP for part of a day (as your submission did), but then slip off.
- From Whaly's analysis, slightly fewer than 3% of all submissions (excluding those killed by flags, automatic rules, and/or mod actions) make the FP. It's a gamble and lottery; luck and chance play large roles.
- About half of all comments appear on those 3% of posts which hit the front page. There's also a pretty sharp fall-off in both vote and comment activity from the 1st to 30th entry on the front page.
- There's been substantial discussion of climate on HN over the years, with 212 titles matching the pattern "(greenhouse gas|global warming|climate change|oceans|co2|carbon dioxide|emissions)". (If anyone cares to suggest other terms I can add those.)[4]
My own FP hit rate is almost exactly 3% as well, and I often feel that the stories I'd most like to see land don't. Some of those have been submitted through the Second Chance Pool[5], a mod-nudged option for under-recognised posts. And I'm doing about three times better than the average. Note that HN does not have a formal reputation bonus and specifically shies from any such feature. (I'd just seen a comment from dang or pg regarding this whilst researching this post, but it's vanished again...)
The best way to make the front page is to keep in mind HN's guidelines and FAQ,[6] to try multiple submissions on a given topic (a reasonable number of repeats for a specific item, other coverage where one fails), to contact mods with concerns, and to make use of the Second Chance Pool for items (your own or from others) which you think may have been under-served by the standard submission queue. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Regarding your post specifically:
The submission is data-rich, though context-poor. It consists primarily of a plot of the actual trend deviation (and yes, that's jarring and disturbing by itself for anyone with sufficient awareness to recognise its significance). I'm not sure it has great hooks for discussion. The earlier submission by Paul-Craft listed above affords much more narrative, as does, perhaps, David Wallace-Wells's June 1 essay "The Ocean is Looking More Menacing" <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/opinion/the-ocean-is-look...>, which I don't see in HN's submissions yet.
Late edits: Fixed markup, awkward wording, a few unfinished thoughts. Corrected my own FP hit rate, 3%, not 10%.
1. "A year on Hacker News" <https://whaly.io/posts/hacker-news-2021-retrospective?ref=wh...>
2. Many more examples: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>
3. One tool used by other outlets is a scheduled discussion for specific topics. Conventions such as "X day" or "Y month" (e.g., Mother's Day, Black History Month, Earth Day, Pride Month) afford opportunities for such discussions. HN has monthly "who's hiring" and "who wants to be hired" threads, the though occurs that other periodic reviews, monthly, quarterly, annually, etc., might be possible. And of course, members can always take advantage of existing signifier days to attempt to amplify their own message(s).
4. That's a relatively high rate for a non-tech issue, by comparison, housing/homelessness: 103, poverty: 50, racism: 6, ozone: 9, censorship: 117, surveillance: 375. By year:
6 2007
23 2008
13 2009
7 2010
3 2011
2 2012
3 2013
5 2014
11 2015
23 2016
12 2017
16 2018
37 2019
16 2020
16 2021
14 2022
5 2023
6. <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html> respectively, linked at the bottom of most HN pages.
Edit: I'm wrong about the reason, because the comments aren't more than the points. But the point stands, it's algorithmic, it's not some conspiracy against discussing climate change. It's that it's a boring discussion that doesn't add to anyone's understanding.
These current-events climate stories are the most important pieces of news on the site. If the moderators are deliberately nerfing them (ETA: or exploitable algorithmic policy is allowing them to be nerfed), I find that extremely terrifying. I hope it is not the case.
In your opinion. Many other HN users don't feel that way and get tired of seeing the same topic over and over again. If it's not intellectually interesting and seems overly political it's getting that flag button clicked.
EDIT: Before downvoting/flagging me consider that maybe I don't hold the views you dislike. I'm making commentary in the comment section and only pointing out that perhaps it's not dang killing submissions but actually other HN users that don't agree with you.
If you genuinely think rage quitting is the best response, probably this place isn't a good fit for you and you should just go. But if your goal though is to improve the site (and possibly the world) for the better, you could send email to Dan (hn@ycombinator.com) and ask what happened here.
Being here can be interesting, but don't expect it to be sympatico. There can be no solidarity while exploitation dominates.
One aspect that I find particularly appealing about platforms like 4Chan is the sense of detachment from the significance of individual contributions. It creates an environment where the present moment holds more value than long-term consequences, allowing for a certain freedom of expression. Despite the abundance of low-quality content, it's fascinating to discover that genuine brilliance can emerge amidst the seemingly endless stream of random posts.
You think climate change is the most important/urgent/relevant thing happening. I get it. I'm not even saying you're wrong. But this is Hacker News; it's not Climate Activism Central. Climate change, no matter how relevant, is not the central topic here.
An article on the world's oceans setting record temperatures for 80 continuous days is alarming. But it was alarming at 70 days, too, and at 60, and at 50. Is there any new discussion that's going to happen on the article about 80 days that didn't happen on the article about 50 days? That's why it shouldn't be on the front page - not because climate change isn't important, but because there's nothing new about the 80-day threshold. It's just the same old bad news. (In the same way, the invasion of Ukraine is bad, and important, but we don't mark the 430th day of the invasion, and then the 440th day, and then the 450th day.)
The key danger of high ocean surface temperatures is more and stronger hurricanes. If temperatures continue climbing, the specter of needing more hurricane categories and the risk of a future hypercane is on the horizon.
show us those removed posts
As it stands... go well. We'll still be here should you change your mind.
EDIT: The post doesn't follow the algorithm. But still, it's algorithmic, stop being conspiratorial."
There is something called a flame war detector that I've seen referred to by the moderator. From experience this kicks in when comments overwhelm points as I said. I expect it's more sophisticated than that, and as I pointed out, comment to point ratio was clearly not the trigger here.
The next post plausible explanation would be a moderator lowered it's weighting because the discussion was skewing into a rehash of boring arguments.
I can also picture that some people flagged it (though usually this gets a [flagged] appended so it's unlikely. Maybe that qualifies as the community rejecting it and legitimizes the OP's complaint.
The least likely thjng possible is some kind of conspiracy to bury climate change stories.
You could argue that if a discussion is heated, at some points both sides run out of arguments and things like Godwin's law kicks in, so letting it continue is counterproductive. On the other hand, I saw interesting and highly upvoted posts disappear after just a couple of comments (because they were politically incorrect, criticized someone, or were in favor of someone currently out of fashion).
This "I dislike so I flag" abuse (by a minority) is my single gripe with HN. Otherwise, it's by far the best community on the web and I'm happy to be a part of it.
Some users are flagging climate-related stories, probably:
>Although submissions cannot be downvoted, flags act as a "super" downvote and enough flags will strongly reduce the rank of the submission, or kill it entirely (flagging is supposed to be used for submissions which break the site guidelines, but that isn't always the case in practice).
https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#flaggi...
Sure it is, if you believe that everyone considers this the biggest issue or that everyone comes to HN to read about climate news then I am sorry to deliver this shock to you that they don't.
>And if your brain is telling you that they are, I would beg you to spend some time recalibrating. Or go read something else, there's lots of room on the front page.
Are you just going to resort to ad hominem attacks or acknowledge that bringing up this topic will resort in discussion that's political in nature? That's all I'm asking, I haven't expressed my personal opinion only pointed out that not all people think or value things the same way, not even in the HN commenter bubble.
It's short-sighted but if you have to survive and pay the bills this is what you have to do. Not everyone is a tenured professor with the ability to have this as their primary priority.
More than plenty of other stories going around to drown climate change conversations in, so to speak. No need to delete them imo. Besides, we're smart enough to ignore the in our opinion boring and political stuff.
actually i'm off to lobsters. we are all just giving YC nerd cred for free they dont deserve.
anybody has an invite? ;)
There are plenty of such repetitive/indignant symptoms and one of our jobs is to dampen them so they don't crowd out the things that actually are interesting to read. If we didn't do this, HN would consist of almost nothing but sensationalism, indignation, and the few hottest topics of the moment (ChatGPT these days). It's our job not to let that happen.
Can you see now why it's bad to assume things and engage in bad faith ad hominem?
>I’m a person who has kids and wants to know if they’re going to have a world to live in
They will. It will be different and might be worse. They won't have the same food, weather might harm them.
If you haven't written me off for my last comment, I rent a cottage on a small farm. On the land stands a sole american chestnut in a region where there was once billions. We have planted seedlings started from this tree. For what? The world didn't go away for this survivor, but the stress of the blight afflicts it and it will almost certainly take its young when they mature. Science has made it possible to bring the closest version of this tree back through genetic modification, but should it be done? I am of the mindset that yes, we should do that. Many will disagree. Should we keep trying to hybridize it with foreign species, or should we let it fade into the fossil record? There's no consensus so national policy hasn't changed.
I bring this up because I do notice, I see the changes in the world around me but I as an individual only have the power to struggle on my own to adapt to them. Do you understand that it's not a lack of my caring, but a fatigue of hearing the same 'worse this year' reporting that there's not much point in discussing?