alt Hacker NewsThe percentage of Show HN posts is increasing, but their scores are decreasing
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They're also overwhelming AI related posts: https://ryanfarley.co/ai-show-hn-data/
It's a volume problem, almost feels like people is spamming HN for quick results. I do appreciate some of the projects and conversations that happened from some of those threads, but a lot of it, it's just feels spam.
It's a mirror of what's happening everywhere. It has become easier than ever to create something whether that's content or an app. But because of that it's harder than ever to get attention. Quantity is drowning out quality and people are becoming desensitized to new creation.
He may be on to something; I'd also think something may be odd with the voting situation. Are there voting bots or something? Because the voting situation here is extremely strange in the last few weeks; not even on reddit did I notice this and reddit voting system has tons of issues as well.
“Also I have no idea why the average score was increased in 2022. A lot of new users?”
Possibly. Post covid many companies laid off people and that could have led to more time and interaction with HN and many more new builders and solopreneurs joining the community
It's hard not to blame LLMs. There was someone on the front page with a Show HN for some LLM-generated calculators recently.
I think there should be an ai-assistance badge on every Github project. I don't want to look at Contribution graph and Commit history and then eventually the source code to find out the same information. What are we hiding now?
Attention is a very scarce resource, the amount of noise and distraction only increases as time goes on.
This is an unfortunate trend we will see across software going ahead. When the bar to make something is low, the market is inevitably flooded by cheap and mediocre stuff that overshadow everything else. Soon there won't be an incentive to make high quality stuff because even if you did, you wouldn't be able to grab anyone's attention with it because it's all taken away by the endless slop that won't stop.
I turn on the `showdead` option, and at the `New Links` section I can see a lot more "Show HN" posts that are flagged dead.
I tried to share a project on Show HN recently (twice!), and I didn't get a single user interaction (basically no one even visited the project, nevermind responding with a comment). I don't think my title was that bad, its more just that there are so many new projects using AI that people are fatigued from it. Its kind of a shame because I'm sure there are lots of really good ideas that are being completely overlooked because of this.
Anecdotally it feels like there aren’t very many Show HNs on the home page. Sadly they seem to be increasingly pushed out by big news stories.
I guess the real question is: is the decrease in average score more than just a function of a larger ratio (and its expected long tail score distribution)?
The problem is all the AI slop that people are publishing to bolster their CVs.
Projects are easier to create, feels like now marketing becomes even more important
It will become a ghost town. It became a gallery of other people prompts. It used to mean something else, one would expect care put into a passion project.
Rotten lemons all the way down.
Edit: this was my fault.
I recently saw a Show HN [1] that had no link to anywhere, but it did have a project name. It currently has 13 points.
[removed]
The original goal of Show HN was for people to show off their work in a way that other people could participate in, sharing code and experience to satisfy intellectual curiosity. It's become nothing more than a funnel for landing pages and vibe-coded slop.
All of the fun has been sucked out of it.
Sooner or later this will hit the VCs. Translated into a mass underfunding.
[dead]
Earlier in the week there were probably about 10 posts on the front page that tempted me to post "Ask HN: Why are there so many Show HN & Ask HN posts today" - I refrained as it seemed a bit like replying all to tell people to stop replying all in an email bomb situation.
Glancing through the content it made me wonder if the newly launched Claude Cowork had a Show HN / Ask HN skill on launch ...