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I Quit Hacker News

(mattmaroon.com)
261 points cwan | 4 comments | 23 Nov 10 17:00 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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pg ◴[23 Nov 10 18:50 UTC] No.1934880[source]▶
The TSA stories are certainly fluff in the sense of being easy to upvote, even if the underlying principles are important. Ironically, so are posts saying that one is tired of TSA stories.

I do believe the TSA stories represent a danger. If there's a road from hacking to politics, it's probably civil liberties. So already for the past week TSA stories have had an automatic penalty applied. Or more precisly, they've been autotagged as being political, which entails a penalty.

There are no TSA stories on the frontpage at this moment. In fact, the frontpage is a pretty normal HN frontpage now.

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1. geuis ◴[23 Nov 10 20:37 UTC] No.1935251[source]▶
I'm going to take a possibly contrarian view, Paul. Personally, I don't trust many other news sources. HN is one that I do. I find immense value in what people here contribute and comment. The TSA stories in particular, while numerous, have been needed.

We cannot live in a complete vacuum, as many of us that center ourselves around technology do. For some background, I used to be extremely politically active when I lived in South Florida. I ran the Miami Indymedia branch for several years. I got my ass thrown in jail for being on a sidewalk at an FTAA protest and videoing it. I got burned out.

When I moved to SF in 2007, I was disillusioned with politics. I discovered that going to rallies accomplishes little. In a very relevant way, the protest community in Miami was very similar to HN. We only talked to each other and got our information from other Indymedia sites where similarly minded people around the world posted similar thoughts. That's why I got burned out.

So while you are well intentioned in penalizing TSA stories, does it stop there? When the US government makes another serious affront to human dignity next year, is HN going to filter that as well? It's ok for us to post Ask HN type questions all the time, or to post about new weekend projects that mashup Google Maps, checkins, and chickens, but it's not ok to post about serious items of public interest that affect HN-members, their friends, and their families?

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2. lwhi ◴[23 Nov 10 20:49 UTC] No.1935292[source]▶
Why would you trust HN more than any other news source?
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3. geuis ◴[23 Nov 10 23:34 UTC] No.1935833[source]▶
Been on HN for 3 years. I personally have met many people that are part of the community. I have met pg a couple of times. I have had personal experience in different communities where members generate news. I have found for the last 3 years that HN'ers who submit stories and comment on them offer sometimes radically different opinions about something, but almost always present interesting and reasoned arguments supporting their positions. There are few trolls here, and they are beaten mercilessly when the emerge. I frequently hop around to "mainstream" news sites (msnbc, cnn, fox, etc) to see if there is anything being reported that I haven't seen on HN or elsewhere. 98.6% of the time whatever is reported on those sites is crap or bullshit, to use the Anathem/Mathic expressions of those terms.

I trust the people of HN, based on all of the previously mentioned reasons.

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4. vorg ◴[24 Nov 10 05:45 UTC] No.1936621{3}[source]▶
I've a similar story. Started using Hacker News for finding stories to read about 3 years ago (tho without getting a login), using it alongside Reddit, etc. But eventually I noticed anything worth reading was virtually always on HN, so began visiting other sites less and less frequently. (Got a login a year ago went I first saw a thread I couldnt resist commenting on.)

So just for the links alone, HN is a good visit!