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

(twitter.com)
482 points ilamont | 2 comments | 11 Jul 20 21:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.454s | source
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_bxg1 ◴[11 Jul 20 23:14 UTC] No.23807033[source]▶
I honestly think the only solution is for individuals to recuse themselves from those networks (I say on one of those networks), lower the trust they place in digital information, etc. It's become clear that the downward spiral is intrinsic to the medium itself (or possibly just the scale). I don't believe that any amount of technology, or product-rethinking, or UX will change that. We just weren't meant to interact this way. My only hope is that people eventually get disenchanted or burned-out enough that they simply stop engaging.

I replied to the original tweet too ("what would you do if you were Jack Dorsey?"). I said I'd shut the whole thing down.

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asah ◴[11 Jul 20 23:33 UTC] No.23807161[source]▶
Sadly, the level headed people recuse themselves which only adds to the toxicity.
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newacct583 ◴[11 Jul 20 23:58 UTC] No.23807309[source]▶
Actually what happens is the level headed people on one side of an issue divide recuse themselves, leaving a "seemingly level-headed consensus echo chamber" behind. IMHO, that's worse. This account exists largely to counter exactly that trend. It's important (to me) that newcomers to the site don't get the idea that "hackers" are all fringe libertarians on every non-technical subject.
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dang ◴[12 Jul 20 00:07 UTC] No.23807375[source]▶
This site may feel like a "consensus echo chamber" but in reality it is nothing remotely close to that. I think you may be running into the notice-dislike bias: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Since you report noticing fringe libertarians, we can be sure that you dislike fringe libertarianism. We can also be sure that they have just the opposite picture of HN, since everyone crafts their picture in the image of what they dislike, without realizing that they're doing that. It just feels like an objective picture. I can list dozens of examples of this, but I'll restrain myself for once and spare you.

Unfortunately, these extremely contradictory subjective images of HN seem to be a consequence of its structure, being non-siloed: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... This creates a paradox where precisely because the site is less divisive it feels more divisive—in the sense that it feels to people like it is dominated by their enemies, whoever their enemies may be. That's extremely bad for community, and I don't know what to do about it, other than post a version of this comment every time it comes up.

Thanks for caring about level-headeness, in any case.

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1. fzeroracer ◴[12 Jul 20 02:01 UTC] No.23808045[source]▶
I'd have to disagree. I've noticed a growing trend of comments like [1] getting upvoted rather than flagged despite making some awful remarks. I don't think it has anything to do with HN being 'non-siloed' because that would be the same argument as on Twitter or Facebook which mostly lack silos as well.

To make an unflattering comparison, Gab and the like are also non-siloed. But that doesn't stop a site from having an innate level of bias to the userbase. The nature of any forum on the internet is that it will cultivate a certain type of userbase over time. Obviously I'm not the greatest one to speak here because I definitely trend more towards the asshole side of the spectrum but I think it's something to be aware of.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23743914

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2. dang ◴[12 Jul 20 02:54 UTC] No.23808369[source]▶
We must understand the word 'silo' differently. Twitter and Facebook are the leading examples of siloed sites in my sense of the word. Twitter has follow lists, Facebook has the social graph. Similarly, on Reddit there are subreddits. HN has no mechanism like any of these: everyone is one big room, for better and for worse.

I think this has significant effects, which I wrote about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098

Re 23743914: I've banned that account. We didn't see that post at the time. I don't think it's typical for such a comment to get upvoted. From what I see, the vast majority get downvoted and/or flagged and/or moderated.