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

I can certainly see his point. The more I grow older, the more I am convinced to spend less time on internet interacting with people. Not only the anonymity or pseudo-anonymity is a magnet for toxic people, it also brings out the worst in people. Even disregarding the outright abuse or outrage, the opinions I see on the internet is very hard to meet someone in real life who has that kind of opinions.

Every Google related thread immediately becomes a thread of bashing Google's history of killing products. I don't know how many times people need to have the same conversation again and again. This has gotten to the point that I don't open any Google related threads. I am here to read thoughtful discussions, not some broken records again and again. Internet forum is hard.

I don't think it has anything to do with anonymity. Most people are using their real names on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. But quips and outrage get more attention and engagement than serious discussion (and none of these platforms are conducive to long-form discussion).

The biggest problem is that replying to a post makes it appear in more feeds. Never in the history of debate and discussion has "add more people!" led to more effective communication. Think of your own work experience - how many meetings were useful when they grew and grew every week?

HN benefits from the lack of a feed but also suffers from the inability to continue discussions over long periods of time between a few users. Something like slack's threads would be useful for a forum, as well as more permanent (old school) topic-based subforums and threads.