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The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

(daringfireball.net)
479 points jgruber | 2 comments | 27 Mar 25 00:18 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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graeme ◴[27 Mar 25 00:53 UTC] No.43489285[source]▶
It's certainly possible there's a backend flag on the site.

But from the comments I see on Reddit, I suspect there may be a simpler explanation: a lot of people for some reason really dislike John Gruber and view him as someone who slavishly praises Apple.

I'm a big John Gruber fan, and I don't think this is true in the slightest. I think he thinks carefully, forms his own opinions, and is very willing to intensely criticize Apple as evidenced by his recent article on the State of Cupertino.

But this means his pro and con opinions don't match typical opinions and this makes him polarizing. And hence some people will flag his articles reflexively or post reflexive dismissals. And Hacker News is heavily weighted to downrank polarizing articles.

I've seen this same pattern happen with other topics where an article doesn't match the zeitgeist, even it the article itself is not flamebait. I think the Something Rotten in the State of Cupertino should have been at the top of Hacker News.

But overall the algorithm has kept HN an interesting place. Any good moderation policy has side effects and tradeoffs.

Dang would be the one to know, but it looks to me there's an innocuous explanation here. As for transparency, it's always frustrating to have it. But transparency in algo's invites gaming of those same algo's (and I don't mean by John). So I wouldn't expect the HN modteam to publish details about their algo.

Edit: since I posted this, the article was flagged. Which I think may support the thesis. I will say the mod team might consider a vouch feature for articles the way one exists for users/comments. I think it ought to take a lot of vouching to counteract flags, but there are clearly articles where this is warranted. The OPSec breach this week was one of them (and it was restored).

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rezmason[dead post] ◴[27 Mar 25 02:57 UTC] No.43489970[source]▶
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1. jgruber ◴[27 Mar 25 13:36 UTC] No.43493503[source]▶
> Case in point: just the other day, he equated the EU's rulings about Apple's ecosystem to the dystopian short story Harrison Bergeron. Rah, rah, Goliath! Sis boom bah!

That was actually just over a year ago, and was in response to the US DOJ antitrust investigation (and didn't mention the EU at all). But, perhaps the fact that you remember it as "just the other day" is a hint that my suggesting "Harrison Bergeron" as a metaphor was uncomfortable but apt?

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/23/harrison-berger...

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2. rezmason ◴[27 Mar 25 15:53 UTC] No.43494936[source]▶
I don't read your blog because your analyses ring true. I read your blog because you are an impactful pundit who I can stomach. Thoughtful people with large followings bore unspoken biases throughout the past and present, and it is my purposeful exercise to engage with the content of one who's alive mainly talks about Apple.

I suspect you have many readers like me. I don't mean that we all disagree with you the exact same way— that would be absurd. I mean that we'll read something sincere but misguided, because that's a valuable element of discourse.

Your Harrison Bergeron allusion wasn't apt, it was memorably cringey, a local extremum. It was ridiculous on its face. We can't know what Vonnegut would think of it, but he might have chosen to write you into Cat's Cradle.