Why? Why make it addictive? Why abuse human nature on what is a website run by adults, for adults, and is doing fine without being turned into a raging nest of wasps?
Go away.
Edit: we have lives to live. I personally avoid addictive shit with vengeance.
I quit smoking, I quit alcohol. I quit facebook. I would quit HN if it ever became “addictive” or anything other than the technology safe harbor i find it to currently be.
Elizer once said in a blogpost don't click on the link that goes to HN to not create another internet addiction: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cyzXoCv7nagDWCMNS/you-re-cal... and that was 10 years ago. Looking back on what I've done all year seems like I sent hours and hours on reddit and HN basically doing nothing.
Any website that employs a karma system uses a positive feedback loop to encourage continual engagement. That, plus the cultural distaste many here have for the "mainstream", particularly social media, leads some to use HN as their primary, if not only, source for both news and online social interaction.
I wouldn't consider either HN or Reddit to be addictive.
I guess it depends on a persons mental state though and if they've anything else going on. Lack of friends in 'real' life etc might lead people to over compensate on platforms like this.
I think it’s because FOMO is rampant in tech and HN is the most relevant source for it. It offers the best of all the technology, programming and science subreddits combined with high quality news outlets, and it does so with better moderation.
The thing about Facebook, Reddit and other social media’s is that they aren’t all that interesting. You can only look at so many videos of cats before it gets boring, well maybe not cats, but I think you get my meaning. I think we get used to the SoMe news feed, and unless it does something that is actually relevant, it grows stale.
HN does something relevant, or at least something that feels relevant. I’m not sure it’s really build to be less addictive, because adrenaline is a hell of a drug, but it may not be intentionally addictive.
I see a lot of the same on LinkedIn, which is really, really popular among managers. Or twitter and journalists. FOMO is just an amazing way to keep users coming back, even if it isn’t necessarily a positive experience.
Well, HN does do something, it's currently the highest level of discourse I know of on the internet today. The greatest pearl to muck ratio one could say. I agree the quality has declined in recent years, as these things do with popularity, but the fact remains. Until something better comes along, I'll keep scanning here to find the pearls among the muck. And contribute my own when I can.
I think it is because of the comments here that sometimes offer even more value and insight than the linked story and article. Reddit too has some really good comments occasionally but the SNR is high with comments from novelty accounts, "This." , etc.
This could be one of the reasons why people prefer to read news here.
IMHO it's the content that is addictive rather than the gamification mechanisms (though they presumably serve to improve the content)
I haven't found a better source for interesting and relevant links
And then because of HN's popularity you can often find relevant people (such as the author or noted experts) commenting in the threads (as well as the inevitable noise, such as myself)
» Hardly any discussion about politics, religion, or any other topic that no one ever changes their minds about.
Maybe I don't understand the word "politics" but I think most of my posts are inherently political in nature. When we talk about how we need to increase taxes and decrease public spending, it is a political statement. When I say most people who don't have children should seriously consider not having any children and those who do have children should consider not having any more, it is also a political statement.
Politics isn't just "Orange man bad" or "ten feet higher".
When I say “I deserve to exist”, that’s unfortunately a strongly political statement. And when people can afford to say “I avoid politics”, that is in itself political.
I have strong political views that I express other places and I am definitely not in a “privileged” demographic that can afford not to be political - I just don’t express them here except sometimes economics and try to back them up with as unbiased credible sources as I can.
No one changes their mind about their choice of stack, languahe, etc. Let alone the many threads that devolve into discussion about how to raise children or something. I’ve been here for years and I’ve awent the exact same arguments and threads dozens of time.
I would not describe HN (or Reddit as a matter of fact) as addictive.
For me, HN is about the quality of content and quality of the comments on the said content.
It’s almost like no matter how obscure something is, if it’s interesting enough to hit the front page you’ll have at least a couple of people that have deep expertise on it and can give you their honest opinion.
It’s also about discovering things and learning about things you already knew.
HN satisfies the short term dopamine reward circuit for a population that is largely self moderating, monitoring and interested in the same techie type news. So it is self reinforcing and content is continually accruing so you develop an urge to check back in. Email use to be this way for a lot of people, Twitter too, FB definitely, etc...
Signal To Noise Ratio. I registered my account on ~2012, but I have been reading HN since 2010, and I didn't participate because the quality of the comment were way too high, and I am not sure if I could make any decent contribution.
And it isn't really HN that is being additive. It is the community, being sensible and professional. It also avoid ( mostly ) all religion and politics debate, or basically things that is hard to argue about Right or wrong. Unless it is something that absolutely needs to be addressed, and the threshold for them seems to be very well managed on HN so far.
You also get huge ( And Surprising ) diversity of professionals on HN. Over the near decade of reading on HN, I have seen Doctors, Medical Research, Oil Refinery, NASA, Nuclear Research Scientist, Tunnel Building Engineers, Professional Musicians, Food Scientist, Chef, Collage Professors, Investment Bankers, Hedge Fund Managers... and a lot more.
I have often wondered, why are they even on HN? They don't speak often on technology related topics, but once you touch on their special subject they offer huge depth of valuable information that goes beyond any normal Internet comment. You will then spend next few hours or even days reading on lots of material before you could even comprehend most of that writing.
Reddit, while being fun, doesn't really have this sense of professionalism.
I find the Noise to Signal ratio on HN to be incredibly high.
For example, multiple posts per day[0] reminding us that facebook is 'bad' and 'spying on us' (no shit). When whatevercoin was a thing, there were many posts per day about how bit whatevercoins were the {best,worst,crashing,soaring,smart,dumb,future}.
HN started off with some direction, but now it seems to be turning into the fake internet point machine that many reddit sites are: where folks are rewarded for (re)posting whatever the 'hot topic' is of the month, and bolstered by millions of tangential or anectodal comments from people who never made it past the headline.
Is it “incredibly” high though? I think you have legitimate criticisms but compared to other news aggregator/ social media sites I think the quality is very high.
Funny you should mention lobsters; while it doesn't happen as often as it does here, that site also likes to bash us on our collective noggins that $internetThing is bad and spying on us as if we didn't get it. Probably the only reason it doesn't happen with the frequency it happens here is that lobsters has a much smaller active poster userbase.
Along the other comments stating that SNR is much higher here than on Reddit, I feel that the lightweightness of HN and the fact that all pages are loaded instantly actually contributes to a state of mind where you want to refresh just to know what's new. When it takes more time to refresh you're not as eager to discover what's new.
Aside from the expertise represented in the HN crowd, I think another key factor is the self-reinforcing culture Y Combinator managed to build here. The guidelines aren't just some random document, they actually describe the spirit of the place - and the community strongly enforces them. This means that uncivil or contentles comments are unusually rare, which drastically improves the quality of the discussion.
Of course, the system isn't perfect (and regularly leads to the semi-justified claim that outlying opinions aren't welcome here), but on the whole it works very well.
31 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 78.9 ms ] threadGo away.
Edit: we have lives to live. I personally avoid addictive shit with vengeance.
I quit smoking, I quit alcohol. I quit facebook. I would quit HN if it ever became “addictive” or anything other than the technology safe harbor i find it to currently be.
Yes, I feel strongly about this.
It happened to me for not being nice with the U.S. while bad talks about EU is widely accepted
After two years I'm still shadowbanned for no real reason...
I guess it depends on a persons mental state though and if they've anything else going on. Lack of friends in 'real' life etc might lead people to over compensate on platforms like this.
A good read on what makes a product addictive is Hooked: A Guide to Building Habit-Forming Products ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hooked-Guide-Building-Habit-Forming... )
The thing about Facebook, Reddit and other social media’s is that they aren’t all that interesting. You can only look at so many videos of cats before it gets boring, well maybe not cats, but I think you get my meaning. I think we get used to the SoMe news feed, and unless it does something that is actually relevant, it grows stale.
HN does something relevant, or at least something that feels relevant. I’m not sure it’s really build to be less addictive, because adrenaline is a hell of a drug, but it may not be intentionally addictive.
I see a lot of the same on LinkedIn, which is really, really popular among managers. Or twitter and journalists. FOMO is just an amazing way to keep users coming back, even if it isn’t necessarily a positive experience.
This could be one of the reasons why people prefer to read news here.
I haven't found a better source for interesting and relevant links
And then because of HN's popularity you can often find relevant people (such as the author or noted experts) commenting in the threads (as well as the inevitable noise, such as myself)
I do my part. I flag submissions that are overly political even if I agree with them.
I don't get a lot of this on reddit as well, unless I purposefully wander into related subreddits. Maybe the odd trump reference comes up sometimes.
Maybe I don't understand the word "politics" but I think most of my posts are inherently political in nature. When we talk about how we need to increase taxes and decrease public spending, it is a political statement. When I say most people who don't have children should seriously consider not having any children and those who do have children should consider not having any more, it is also a political statement.
Politics isn't just "Orange man bad" or "ten feet higher".
It sounds like you don't read any of the web development discussions here.
New Technology is evil, and Server-Side Javascript will be responsible for the second-coming of Christ.
The statement is an exaggeration, but that's about how passionately the HN crowd seems to push their ecosystem politics here.
For me, HN is about the quality of content and quality of the comments on the said content.
It’s almost like no matter how obscure something is, if it’s interesting enough to hit the front page you’ll have at least a couple of people that have deep expertise on it and can give you their honest opinion.
It’s also about discovering things and learning about things you already knew.
And it isn't really HN that is being additive. It is the community, being sensible and professional. It also avoid ( mostly ) all religion and politics debate, or basically things that is hard to argue about Right or wrong. Unless it is something that absolutely needs to be addressed, and the threshold for them seems to be very well managed on HN so far.
You also get huge ( And Surprising ) diversity of professionals on HN. Over the near decade of reading on HN, I have seen Doctors, Medical Research, Oil Refinery, NASA, Nuclear Research Scientist, Tunnel Building Engineers, Professional Musicians, Food Scientist, Chef, Collage Professors, Investment Bankers, Hedge Fund Managers... and a lot more.
I have often wondered, why are they even on HN? They don't speak often on technology related topics, but once you touch on their special subject they offer huge depth of valuable information that goes beyond any normal Internet comment. You will then spend next few hours or even days reading on lots of material before you could even comprehend most of that writing.
Reddit, while being fun, doesn't really have this sense of professionalism.
I find the Noise to Signal ratio on HN to be incredibly high.
For example, multiple posts per day[0] reminding us that facebook is 'bad' and 'spying on us' (no shit). When whatevercoin was a thing, there were many posts per day about how bit whatevercoins were the {best,worst,crashing,soaring,smart,dumb,future}.
HN started off with some direction, but now it seems to be turning into the fake internet point machine that many reddit sites are: where folks are rewarded for (re)posting whatever the 'hot topic' is of the month, and bolstered by millions of tangential or anectodal comments from people who never made it past the headline.
0. http://funkyimg.com/i/2S1gE.png
You can't post images inline. You can't embed links into text. Replies don't get forwarded to your inbox.
Simple things like that focus the site on the discussion and not on meme-building.
I wonder morals of this platform quite often.
Freedom of speech... What a joke!
Of course, the system isn't perfect (and regularly leads to the semi-justified claim that outlying opinions aren't welcome here), but on the whole it works very well.