alt Hacker NewsAsk HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?
When working on my projects and talking to investors, I often hear: “Just post it on Hacker News or Reddit and show that people love it.”
What I find strange is that Hacker News feels oddly opaque. I’ve never met anyone who can clearly explain how it works in practice. Not just the rules, but the dynamics: what’s repeatable, what’s luck, and what actually matters.
By using the Kevin Bacon-number idea: I can usually get within three degrees of separation of well-known technologists like Linus Torvalds, but I can’t seem to get within three steps of someone who confidently understands how HN works.
So I’m asking sincerely: Does anyone here feel they understand Hacker News? If so, what are the real levers, and what do people consistently misunderstand?
PS: This question comes from a mix of genuine curiosity and personal frustration. I’m honestly trying to understand how HN works in practice.
Comments
One of the real levers is that if you get randomly and inexplicably locked out of your Google account and your whole life/business is destroyed, posting on Hacker News might be your only chance at redemption.
The algorithm was shared in the past. The scoring is pretty simple tbh
- the older it is, the less score
- the more votes and comments it has, the higher the score
- penalties reduce the score ( eg. By moderator)
How it works for the end-user:
- People browsing in newest, make it visible in the main page.
- Most people see the main page
Result: interesting topics go to the main page
It’s disappointing that a normal democratic forum run is alien to folks. Of course, there are moderators as we cannot expect everyone to behave :)
Bad: "I wrote a web app"
Good: "Why I used Postgres to write a web app"
Writers.
Money. A spot as US citizen to get into startup school.
Money. An investment from a noble mind to another noble mind.
Money. Pass information to fellows at YC (who are from a different domain, see YC as a cool place) they crowd and promote (seems organic)
Money. Well, then the product or the tech fades, because its a bloatware.
They retry the same thing again with next batch of people. Keeps the forum running. The maintainers get retired or really tired.
Readers. I have seen this one before. Reader. Well, now, you are old
If you can write a blog post like https://ciechanow.ski/ you will get upvotes.
Good luck, looking forward...
For years I thought that Hacker News has no moderators. Apparently it does, but they seem to keep a low profile. I have no idea what their protocol is and I don't see any help menu that mentions them.
I found out, the other day, that if you post too many comments in too short a time (also undocumented) your final comment is deleted (sorry, you just lose it) instantly with a somewhat snarky message about how you post too much.
I am a little mystified about what community Hacker News serves. It doesn't seem to be the kind of hackers I grew up with (fiercely skeptical, a la 2600 magazine), because, as one example, skepticism about AI or self-driving vehicles is generally downvoted.
Not so much Hacker News as Next Shiny Toy News.
Even so, I know of no better way to discover interesting tools and trends than Hacker News.
Yeah bro. If you go to YC and do well enough they'll tell you. They'll put you in the second chance pool. They'll tell you not to upvote from the profile page, or from a direct link to the YC story page.
But the reason they won't tell you is that the entire reason it works is because you don't know.
This question seems very strange, because it’s really not difficult to understand how it works. You submit, people vote if they like it, but mostly ignore it, and occasionally flag it. Stories that generated interests rise, sometimes to the point where they end up in the front page. Stories that generate too much unwanted interest (e.g. that look too much like flame wars, or like never-ending discussions that go nowhere) sink to the bottom. There are corner cases and you won’t get the exact algorithm, partly because human moderators intervene as well.
If there is one thing to note, it’s that obvious self-promotion is not good. Technical details are more interesting than sales pitches.
[dead]
It‘s clearly manipulated/curated, you can tell my some absolutely shitty content with zero comments and zero engagement ending up and staying on the frontpage for quite a while.
It is not clear what exactly you are looking for?
> “Just post it on Hacker News or Reddit and show that people love it.”
From my experience, both HN and Reddit have the worst traffic. I got "tens of thousands" of visitors from both with exactly zero conversion. I am now getting a few hundreds a month from Google and other sources and the conversion rate is roughly 20-25%. So pretty much not worth it to pursue HN/Reddit for your startup though your mileage would probably vary.
I'd use HackerNews for what it is, a news site for casual/mixed information with sometimes interesting discussions. You could have much better levers in other places.