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 [flagged] Ask HN: Is HN slowly starting to experience enshitification?
33 points by scdnc 8 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 38 comments
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.


I wish the world were such that it wasn't as important to talk about "politics", but it keeps intruding into HN-relevant areas: defending science, promoting quack science, arresting students, etc.

HN is still the best community I've found for discussion. I regularly encounter comments that expand my understanding and change my mind.


I'm with you on forum quality. But in a broader, societal context, smart people being apolitical is one of the ways in which unintelligent people come to dominate politics. Democratic political discourse is slow, inefficient and frustrating. But that is part of the process. The alternative is to such conflict is to let one person or a political homogenous group make the decisions.


I agree, HN is not the forum for political discourse.

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.


Me too (yarg!)


I submit that the Socratic approach is the preferred tool.


Almost always. Most adults with whom I try to apply it tend to get defensive and "offended" pretty quickly though. People don't like to have their world views challenged methodically.


From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:

> 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.


I agree that it’s a function of moderation, but I also think moderation is deliberately done in a way to drive/keep engagement; otherwise, there would be far fewer ideological, current-events, and non-“hacker” posts that receive a lot of comments and upvotes.

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


Which articles do you feel didn't meet the guidelines, and which guidelines did they fail to meet?


Every time I read the word "enshittification" I feel a little shittier, and the frequency with which I see it here is increasing, so yes.

But really, it's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.


I feel that too, because people will use it any way they like without understanding what it means


Sometimes you have to go with the least dirty shirt in the hamper


In my opinion yes. The quality of submissions and the top page is still high, but there has been a large shift from startups, tech and science to pop and politics.

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.


Folks feel strongly about many social, cultural and political topics. It's a moment and a trend, and certainly not specific to HN. Does it make HN slightly less interesting sometimes? Maybe. But then, is there a forum entirely immune to it? Not really.


Yep.

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.


I’m super interested in this topic of “how to keep a community alive”, (1) introducing new blood - with the risk mentioned above - at a regular pace, and (2) keeping existing members as alive/active/connected as possible.

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)


You want everyone to gain a little more than they give up, then your logistics bring people into interaction with your value proposition and the community grows.


I don't think it's enshittification in the sense that Doctorow coined the word.

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.


> I don’t think it’s “enshittification” in the sense Doctorow coined the term.

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


Lol I remember arguing with someone on here that children can't consent to the surgery and other trans gender stuff they were pushing on them back in 2018. I think somewhere in the rules it says you're specifically not supposed to ask if HN is getting worse because people say it is so often.

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.


Children can't consent to being permanently mutilated by being forced to undergo an unwanted predetermined puberty.


I truly do not ask this to be pedantic or snarky, but “enshitification” is a very specific type of platform decay related to business models. How does that apply here?


While this post was appropriately flagged for violating the guidelines, many other ideological posts that go against those guidelines remain unflagged. Since moderation is part of their service, I think it still aligns with the definition. However, you are also correct. I didn't mean it strictly in the exact sense but was also referring to a general decline, regardless of their business model.


Yes OP is misusing the term. Redditification maybe?


I'm not sure the right term isn't just "becoming popular".

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?


Nope, sorry, that isn't how language works. It now means "anything anyone believes is turning into shit for any reason." And there's nothing anyone can do about that.


My subjective ratio of good to bad links is better than almost every other website I visit. Keep up the good work HN!


It’s fine. We’re fine.


lol yeah.. no rubbernecking people!


You’re right, you probably haven’t been around long enough to notice the cycles, or the cliques, or even the lack of dark mode (too soon?)


> “enshitification” ??

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.


Someone already commented this and I responded to that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44254640


>but I'm increasingly seeing more ideological posts that are especially not hackerish,

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.


Being a hacker and not wanting to deal with politics is like being a fish not wanting to deal with water.


Yes, because ...all hackers from all over the globe will ...uhm, suffocate and die if they don't want to deal with political drama in the US.


I think GP meant not realizing that one is unavoidably immersed in politics.


That's false though. I don't give a shit about fashion either and everybody wears clothes. But I don't have to listen to people moralize constantly about how important it is I listen to their shitty regurgitated takes on houndstooth.

The everything is political crowd demand an army behind them even though they aren't worth following.


That might be true but that doesn't mean we want to talk about it all day long every single day.

Obviously HN's moderation and flagging system is a long way from perfect, but in general it does work.




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