alt Hacker NewsI used to love reading the HN comments. When there was a new tool or technology being discussed there would almost certainly be someone who directly worked on it, if not the founder themselves, giving further insight and welcoming discussion. And when there was back and forth discussion, it was people clarifying their questions and answers, and sharing their expertise. Now it’s just Reddit-style comment sections of people picking at each other.
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It is my feeling that there has been an uptick of negativity for the last few years. Well before AI.
I understand people have their reasons to be negative about tech but they could go somewhere else to post their comments. Going to a Star Wars forum to tell everyone how much Star Wars sucks would be nonsensical. Imagine a Star Wars forum full of people saying Star Wars sucks. That’s how I HN has felt for years now.
I’ve taken breaks from this site from time to time because eventually it just makes you feel bad. It wears you down.
People were saying the exact same things two years ago.
I haven’t been on HN for a decade or anything, but I do see founders in the comments more often than not. Of course this is n=1.
HN comment threads have been blamed for becoming Reddified since at least 2009.
> Now it’s just Reddit-style comment sections of people picking at each other.
Absolute nonsense.
> > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html]
The guidelines post above links to nine comments echoing yours, some almost 20 years old.
The new HN is lobste.rs. You need an invite though, which is why it's the new HN and not the new Reddit.
I disagree with _that_ being the turn of events. In my experience, the conversation has died because everything turns into either: "That article was written by LLM" or "how this relates to LLM"