Ask HN: Is HN becoming more of an “echo chamber”?

I feel like there are certainly some points of view that are difficult to espouse on HN so for that reason it does have echo chamber qualities. I don't think it's with everything, but there are some third rail topics that tend to be more controversial and for which there is little tolerance for challenging.

You mean HNers hate Google but don't think Reddit is like going from the frying pan to the fire?

Is this such a bad thing?

IMO echo chambers are underrated for psychological support. If you can be aware of the effect, that's ideal. You can come here when the world is just way too off-kilter for your taste, and have your entire info-person past reaffirmed.

But if you turn away from certain types of echo chambers just because they're echo chambers, you'll naturally and more frequently find yourself in an unnatural stance, psychologically speaking. You'll more freqently find that your perspectives, brought forward from your own past, are untenable. That could be disastrous and possibly exacerbate conditions like anxiety.

So, culturally we teach ourselves that echo chambers are "bad" but I think they're doing a really helpful thing by providing a baseline layer of community-knowledge feedback with a subjective effect which is moderated by the individual's own experience level. It could be something like the informational equivalent of someone saying, "yeah baby I know" when you're crying. You know they know, they know you know they know, etc. But if you chase the echo it starts to look like blaming a support structure, and that's a poor point of access to solutions in the context.

I also don't think it's ironic that you're asking that here. This should happen naturally as members of a community compare themselves against their perception of the community itself. There is sometimes a lot of emotional content in this kind of setup. You joined N time-units ago, you've changed since then, and now look--the community is still doing this thing or that? A perspective on one's own identity as an "identity of productive change" can reinforce this differential perspective/judgment.

I wonder if it could be though that an expectation of creative or cognitive variety may have been violated. Maybe that's worth exploring--how do we get more of that. It's more like it's the community system's own qualities that raise this kind of echo chamber discussion periodically, and I'd offer that this happens more frequently the less meaningful traction is perceived. (I think the chamber effect could be easily moderated by moving away from the up/down voting dichotomy, among other things)

IMO, no for the most part. There is a great deal of opinion as well as technological diversity represented here. For these facets it's a great place to be. @dang and friends do, IMO, a pretty good job of keeping most things sane. However...

The not so great facet is the amount of obvious wearing-your-politics-on-your-sleeve, but that could easily be said for society in general right now. If I had the time I'd love to pull the top X links and their comments for the day and do some sentiment analysis just to see how quickly it goes from "X technology" to "Y political leanings".

Another not so great facet is that a lot of stories are very coastal. It's admittedly not HNs fault because if you're not in CA or NY you kinda feel left out in some respects. I wish a lot of tech companies would go to other places to A/B test new products and services.

No I make sure to criticize every comment I see. You're welcome as my karma takes the hit for the rest of us

to me it doesn't feel like any more of an echo chamber than it always has.

google is not "dying"

but its quality is getting worse because they have no real economic incentive to get better as long as lots of people don't start using other engines

average people don't care or even notice whether their search results about kim kardashian and football are seo-optimized garbage, convincing semi-automatic gpt-3 based content or actually quality content

people like us whose entire jobs couldn't be done decently (or at all)without really efficient search engines tend to notice declines in quality a lot faster

so no, not an echo chamber, at least not at all in regard to this kind of topics

Maybe a random but relevant question to ask - it recently occurred to me that I know very little about the average HN user, but I presume almost if not all of the people here to be male. Curious if that’s accurate or not.

Reddit is MUCH more of an echo chamber than HN. You will get downvoted on most subs if you say something that goes against that sub's majority opinion. Whereas on HN, people will usually entertain a good-faith argument.

If you use an echo chamber to ask if you are in an echo chamber the answer will most likely be no.

HN is in love with anything Apple-related.

I would say HN is trending a bit away from inquiring conversation to like really absolute strong statements. Things like "google is lieing" or "it's a crime if facebook takes EU data outside of EU" or "apple is evil".

In short -> it feels like it's getting a bit more reddit / moral outrage oriented these days vs inquiry and discussion?

And unpopular opinions definitely get downvoted (vs just off topic / no content posts). It's worth reading the downvoted discussions as they are often interesting these days.

only the good echos

This is literally addressed in documentation.

The reactionary political takes can be pretty exhausting to be honest. There is a stark contrast between the nuance and depth of the technical conversations compared to the politically adjacent ones.

More non-liberal views would be interesting. The common notion on HN is that anything that's not liberal is automatically Fascist or __insert_the_worst_interpretations__.

Like every other part of the internet where I spent any time, HN became more touchy and crabby around the start of the pandemic. The pandemic is not yet resolved. I imagine it remains more touchy than "normal" as a consequence, given that normal is a moving target and you never step in the same river twice, so to speak.

I think the answer to whether or not HN is an echo chamber, as of this moment, is no. It seems like a weekly occurrence where two conflicting articles on the front page. Oftentimes one is a direct response. In this sense, one is exposed to a spectrum of ideas.

What I will say is that tribalism is still incredibly strong. The amount of times I've been drive-by downvoted always makes me chuckle. The other day I was downvoted for correcting myself that Ethereum is driving up GPU prices and not Bitcoin. Presumably the person didn't mind the Bitcoin negativity but did mind for Ethereum. I kind of wish a reply is necessitated in order to downvote sometimes.

You can't downvote articles so the fact an article has a lot of upvotes can't really be used as an example of HN being an echo chamber. All the people who want to downvote it have no voice. Plus, an upvote isn't really a mark of agreeing with the article; some people upvote because the article is interesting and worth discussing.

Also, and maybe I'm playing to the echo chamber a bit here, it's possible that there are some subjects that HN readers are just mostly aligned on. That doesn't make the whole site an echo chamber. There are still plenty of things that HN can't agree on (JS SPAs is a good example - every thread gets split right down the middle).

It's a cynical place with amusingly conservative and luddite tendencies. But even those circle jerks get regularly interrupted.

Reoccurring topics of contentions are:

- Linux <-> Apple

- Electron <-> Native

- Slack <-> IRC <-> Email <-> Discord

- JS <-> no JS ever

- Zuckerberg is worse than JS and FB will fail tomorrow <-> He's an evil genius, operating within the law and FB won't go anywhere

- Work at FAANG at all costs <-> fuck it

And every side has adequate supporters. Bitcoin, crypto, and IoT are the exception. Nobody seems to like that stuff here.

Could be worse.

I’d tend to say no with a caveat.

Points and counterpoints typically both appear in full opacity, meaning multiple viewpoints and perspectives are being upvoted (or at least not downvoted).

I also don’t see a lot of bandwagon comments, which is nice. On Reddit you’ll see one point of view and then an entire comment thread reinforcing, praising or doubling down on the original point. That feels more like an echo chamber.

That said, the HN demographics are probably majority 20-40yo US-based males interested in tech and startups. That in and of itself will create at least some echo chamber effect as we almost certainly don’t adequately represent the demographic of any state or country, or the world.

That said for a relatively homogeneous demographic compared to the world as a whole I think multiple viewpoints are encouraged and respected to a degree I don’t see on other public discussion boards.

Yes, it's becoming an echo chamber, although not as bad as Reddit. However, I'm not sure if it's attributable to HN, broader tech attitudes, or coastal city demographics. I see politically charged opinions leaning Right, and opinions that lean left are more likely to get downvoted. For example, on comments related to H1-B, there's a tendency to see normative ("it should be this, it ought to be that") focused opinions. On the other hand, you'll see comments that state H1-B reduces wages for everyone get downvoted to oblivion, followed up with comments stating that the system is just & fair for all parties involved.

I'm keeping it brief, but you get the idea.