alt Hacker NewsI’ve also noticed a steady increase in what I call “empty sneering”, where they don’t really have a point to contribute but they just want to dunk on somebody. It’s especially noticeable for any hot button topics – yeah, we get that you don’t like Musk/Trump/AI/whatever but do you have an actual point to contribute or not?
I’ve been saying for years that spite should be viewed as a primary metric for social media. The higher the volume of spite, the more harmful it is and the less useful it is. Hacker News is heading in the wrong direction.
"Empty sneering" is a good term for it. Seems like the curse of conversation at scale: Reduction to polarized talking points. Often without engaging TFA at all.
I think there are still good conversations happening here, and I really appreciate the efforts of moderators to keep HN hacky.