The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

Moderation on HN is probably the most transparent you’ll find anywhere aside from Wikipedia, and HN is better than WP in terms of unbiased moderation. Dang and team have a stellar reputation and the idea that they’re covertly blacklisitng a personal blog is really silly.

OP’s submissions are likely not popular because of a mixture of them being not that interesting or useful and also contentious. Contentious submissions get massively reduced in visibility automatically. And stuff like an iPhone review significantly after other mainstream reviews is just not that interesting.

My thesis is that HN would like you to think their moderation is highly transparent, and it's very clear that the core HN audience believes that to be true, but that in fact it is not transparent at all.

If the problem is with my writing "being not that interesting or useful and also contentious", how then do you explain Daring Fireball ranking #3 here from 2007-2021 but dropping to #78 from 2021-2025. Do you think my writing was that much more interesting and useful (and less contentious?) for the first 14 years of HN but changed suddenly in 2021?

Or do you think HN's hidden admin moderation changed suddenly around 2021?

I'm a fan of both HN and DF. If I assume my worldview is accurate, that both are above-board, then the only explanation I have left is flamewar detection. Your links get too many comments—plus some flags sprinkled in there—too fast relative to upvotes. So, your posts get too much engagement.

There is a twisted logic to that algo, esp. for a "News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters"-flavored attitude, and esp. for a site that's trying to be as efficiently managed as possible.

Plus, Scott Alexander noted recently a decline in Substack due to deboosting on X, but also that just too many people are now Substacking, many of whom are good, and a lot who are just clones. And on the Dithering about "Rotten", you and Ben both concur that it feels like a while since either of you went viral. So as soon as a solo blogger blows up, the system quickly co-opts that blend of content into other media channels. i.e., Indie generally doesn't last.

I did a YoY look at your rankings:

2007: #50

2008: #20

2009: #3

2010: #1

2011: #2

2012: #7

2013: #34

2014: #17

2015: #568

2016: #184

2017: #8

2018: #69

2019: #86

2020: #8

2021: #20

2022: #406

2023: #98

2024: #133

2025: #53

(10/9/20XX – 10/09/20XX)

https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/?start=20...

Something weird definitely happened in 2015/2016, for sure (maybe the start of the anti-engagement algo). But your blog was also crazy popular between the iPhone's release and Steve Jobs' death. That was probably the most dynamic time in Apple's history (post-Sculley), with plenty of controversy worthy of exacting critique (Antennagate, etc.)

This is fantastic, and I'm embarrassed I didn't think to do this year-by-year analysis myself. But then how do you square up the tepid response here to

https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/something_is_rotten_in_th...