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PG: The biggest source of stress for me at YC was running HN

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482 points ilamont | 1 comments | 11 Jul 20 21:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.249s | source
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dsr_ ◴[11 Jul 20 23:22 UTC] No.23807091[source]▶
The key to getting good discussions is to not have a profit motive coupled to eyeballs.

HN doesn't show ads, doesn't care about growth.

Large newspapers had strict firewalls between advertising, journalism and opinion -- but smaller papers had to fold to pressure from advertisers.

Subscription services need eyeballs badly -- but they need paying eyeballs, which means that they need to offer more than just outrage -- but if they don't show at least some of their content for free, they can't grow.

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1. bhargav ◴[12 Jul 20 00:57 UTC] No.23807680[source]▶
I don’t really think you can maintain a social media company at scale without having revenue to pay the people that maintain it.

HN doesn’t have ads because they are running HN at a deficit to get eyeballs on YC. Granted, to my knowledge, they haven’t suppressed any threads in their competitors; kudos.