Ask HN: Is HN slowly starting to experience enshitification? This is just a feeling, and I haven't been here for a long time compared to a lot of other people, but I'm increasingly seeing more ideological posts that are especially not hackerish, and in general, a lot more posts that don't seem to fit Hacker News, along with many more snarky and superficial comments than when I joined. And yes, I understand the inherent irony of posting something like this. |
HN is still the best community I've found for discussion. I regularly encounter comments that expand my understanding and change my mind.
I would much prefer if there was a forum for smart people to be pan-political, that is apply their critical thinking skills and demand detailed information from all perspectives. Seems to me that all we have is several echo-chambers where only non-dissenting views and voices are permitted.
> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
That said, I've been on HN for over 10 years. There does seem to be a slight increase in low quality / low effort comments as of late. That's probably a function of moderation than anything else. The average number of comments on posts have been growing steadily, and I suspect it's getting harder to moderate.
For example my post got appropriately flagged while a lot of other popular post don't get flagged even though they don't meet the guidelines: https://www.hntoplinks.com/year?sort=upvotes https://www.hntoplinks.com/year?sort=comments
But really, it's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
The main change I have felt is in comment quality. While the amount of juvenile humor or AI assisted posts seems on par with Reddit, the quality feels to have the wrong derivative.
Either you radically gatekeep your community to ensure it only allows people discussing topics you find interesting and watch it die as newbies get turned away while stalwarts leave for whatever reason, or you welcome "new blood" with their own interests which are not always completely aligned with your own and watch the community change around you.
And it's not just forums, it happened in usenet, it happens in social circles and friendship groups, it happens in suburbs or neighbourhoods. I'm pretty sure it happened around campfires and caves 50 thousand years ago.
Would anyone here have good reads linked to that topic, I’m interested to share - writing this, I just realize I should’ve asked my friend Copilot too.
One interesting framework linked to this I found a couple years ago and still refer too frequently is the Orbit model (https://orbit-model.vercel.app)
I don't see YCombinator as having gone down a path of "create something to attract users, then they degrade that to for their "business customers", and finally degrade it further for users and business customers to maximize profits for YCombinator."
It was obvious (to anybody who put even the slightest thought into it) that Hacker News was always, from the very beginning, a way for YC to have access to "hackers" that they could feed into their startup accelerator and venture capital business. And I don't see any sign of that having changed, and certainly not in a way that's made it worse for users of HN. It is what it's always been. They've never tried to hide that.
What I do think has changed is me. And the "community" here over the years.
I'm way way less interested in GenAI and the LLM frenzy than most submitters (and I think commenters) here.
But that's not a new thing, I was never interested in NFTs or crypto/blockchain either. And not just the tech hype topics, I skip over things that just don't interest me at all, like Kubernetes or retro computing or language advocacy/wars.
I also have a (quite possibly wrong) view that as HN's user base has grown, there's a lower percentage of people here for the "hacker" discussions - which I define as the interesting technical stuff, whether computer related or not - and a higher percentage of people here for the latest tech fad or who are just here for the money, and hoping to get noticed by YC or founders, instead of being here out of pure intellectual curiosity.
I look at the https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders list, and I'd guess I recognise probably 1/3rd of the top 50 usernames there. (I have been here a while, since 2009.) I rarely notice those usernames these days, either because they've significantly slowed down in commenting, or perhaps because these days they're commenting in threads I don't open.
I 100% believe that for me, there was a higher signal to noise ratio for both discussions I'm interested in and discussions with people I recognise and respect, than there was 10 or 15 years ago. But I'm still here.
Personally I think it had a rough few years after 2020 (which sites didn't?) but it doesn't seem much worse than I remember it.
More people almost always results in more discussions of things that don't interest me, and almost always results in discussions where it's clear some participants have a much more shallow understanding and experience in the topics I am interested in.
Maybe that's just me getting old though?
I don’t think that word means what you think it means:
“…then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.“ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification)
Ycombinator is not degrading the quality of this forum. You’re unhappy with the qualities of posts from free user participation (which is everybody; no premium paid tier users). Totally different situations.
hasnt changed. When you give anonymous people the ability to censor the speech of others, it creates a bad situation that will always enshitify.
People who get censored always leave. The remaining cohort loses more than just that who specific censored subject. Leaving the site a bit shittier and declining.
It's really the design of the site that will result this way.
While I didn’t mean it only strictly in the original sense and instead also used it as a synonym for general decline, I still think it fits the definition more or less, since while my post got appropriately flagged for not meeting guidelines, a lot of posts, mainly ideological and current events, that also do not meet the guidelines don’t get flagged these days [1][2], and since moderation is part of their service, the service is degrading, likely so that this site will grow.
> What I do think has changed is me. And the "community" here over the years. > I also have a (quite possibly wrong) view that as HN’s user base has grown, there’s a lower percentage of people here for genuine “hacker” discussions—by which I mean the interesting technical stuff, whether computer-related or not—and a higher percentage here for the latest tech fad, for YC or founder attention, or just for money, rather than pure intellectual curiosity.
Even though I’ve been here only a few years, I still feel the same way.
> I 100% believe that for me, there was a higher signal-to-noise ratio for both the discussions I’m interested in and the people I recognize and respect, than there was 10 or 15 years ago. But I’m still here.
I’ve gradually stopped visiting most popular sites, be it social media, forums, etc. because as they grow, the noise overwhelms the signal, and the original reason to visit vanishes for me. I still will be here too but probably not for long.
[1] https://www.hntoplinks.com/year?sort=upvotes [2] https://www.hntoplinks.com/year?sort=comments
The everything is political crowd demand an army behind them even though they aren't worth following.
Obviously HN's moderation and flagging system is a long way from perfect, but in general it does work.