
Hacker News is a social echo chamber - BCM43
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/28232.html
======
DougWebb
I'm curious how many people who have the ability to upvote or flag stories
actually do so. For my part, I'm very conservative:

\- I never flag stories; I may not find a story interesting, but I don't feel
it's appropriate to impose my interests on others or 'police' their
discussions.

\- I rarely upvote stories, mostly because I'm usually browsing stories that
are already on the front-page. Occasionally I skim through the new stories and
if I see something interesting there I might upvote it.

\- For comments, I upvote comments I find particularly helpful or insightful.
I don't downvote comments very often unless they're particularly rude.
However, I never downvote comments that are part of a discussion I'm having; I
don't trust my impartiality in that case.

If my behavior is typical, then stories are being controlled by a 'vocal
minority' who take the time to upvote or flag them. As in any group, the vocal
minority tends to have the more fundamentalist / extremist points of view on a
subject, which could lead to the outcomes TFA discusses.

~~~
potatolicious
\- I flag stories only if it seems like the story is abusive, not just off-
topic (e.g., overly self-promotional, complete noise, etc). This happens very
rarely.

\- I don't usually upvote stories. I only do so if I have a very immediate
"holy shit this is amazing!" reaction to it.

\- I upvote comments frequently, particularly if it's a good, well-argued
point done in good style (i.e., more factual than rhetoric). I downvote a
_lot_ more than I used to, but usually reserve it for posts I consider
abusive. This means ad hominems and egregious displays of
fundamentalism/extremism (e.g., "all laws are paid for by big corporate
interests", which comes up every. single. time. AirBnb or Uber is mentioned).

That last part is subject to some personal bias naturally, but I do think it's
important to reward posts that provide a holistic, nuanced view of issues
rather than the fiery rhetoric of people banging on black and white drums.
I've noticed a _lot_ more of this sort of drumbeating on HN nowadays.

There are some topics that show up on HN frequently, but the discussion is
incredibly poor every single time. I've given up on upvoting/downvoting any
such discussions and simply don't read them anymore. This includes everything
on sexism in tech.

~~~
MartinCron
_There are some topics that show up on HN frequently, but the discussion is
incredibly poor every single time. I 've given up on upvoting/downvoting any
such discussions and simply don't read them anymore. This includes everything
on sexism in tech._

I don't blame you, but I find it especially sad, because sexism in tech is one
area that actually needs more meaningful nuanced discussion. Not to be too
elitist, but if _we_ can't have this conversation, who can?

~~~
mikeash
Why would HN be a particularly good venue for that conversation? There are a
lot of smart people here, but a lot of the factors that make HN a good place
for technical discussions make it a _horrible_ place for softer discussions
like those about sexism.

~~~
foobarbazqux
> a lot of the factors that make HN a good place for technical discussions
> make it a horrible place for softer discussions like those about sexism.

Such as being 5% female.

~~~
mikeash
While that certainly makes it a bad place for the sexism discussion, that
certainly does _not_ make it a good place for technical discussions!

~~~
foobarbazqux
Sure, whenever there's a massive imbalance between the genders, it's going to
be less productive than when there's a balance. It also doesn't help much if
the sexism discussion occurs among a group of 95% females - which is typically
what happens.

------
vezzy-fnord
_Stories that discuss the difficulties faced by minorities in our field are
summarily disappeared._

Really?

I've tended to notice the opposite: new ones are constantly appearing, they
get lots of comments, inspire heated debates and most sentiments are
sympathetic, sometimes to an almost unhealthy and postmodern degree.

~~~
lemmsjid
Count me as one of the unhealthily sympathetic. That said, different people
and/or cultures have more or less tolerance for argument. One person's
'spirited debate' can be another's 'flamewar'.

Now, preface my following comments with the fact that I don't have data to
back them up, so really you can take or leave what I'm about to say--if it
resonates, then maybe I'm on to something--if it doesn't, then maybe I'm just
projecting.

What I've noticed is a pattern that a dispassionate article about the plight
of women in the tech industry will survive, but an article by a woman who is
actively angry about being harassed will get a large number of angry,
devaluing comments and will disappear very quickly.

On a positive note, this reflects a culture that values a level of scientific
detachment, and also a recognition of the fact that Internet arguments can get
very circular and ugly and can ultimately destroy an online community if left
unchecked.

The problem is that this pattern also belies a cultural devaluation of the
role of anger in combating trauma. Where trauma exists, anger will exist.
Angry people are not always fair and balanced--in fact the state of the
emotion actively undermines such a thing. Anger and scientific detachment are
quite antithetical, because an angry person is very much inside of the thing
they're supposed to be detached about--and it's hurting them.

So when a woman who is traumatized writes an article out of anger, there is
inherent value in that, even if the anger behind the article makes it one-
sided, because in the end that person is (bravely, in the face of the
inevitable harassment that will come of it) bearing witness to what is (in my
own experience) a major problem in the industry, a problem that is not only
hurting people but limiting the talent pool significantly.

~~~
asdasf
>So when a woman who is traumatized writes an article out of anger, there is
inherent value in that

But that doesn't mean there is value to it being posted here. I don't think it
is surprising or bad that angry rants disappear quickly, while a dispassionate
analysis lives on.

------
protomyth
"The original story linked to a review of peer-reviewed scientific research."

I believe the credit we assign to peer reviewed scientific, mathematical, or
engineering papers shouldn't be anywhere near the same weight we assign to
peer reviewed social science papers. I dealt with quite a lot of these papers
early in my career and they do a wonderful job of backing up grant proposals
but a poor job of being correct.

My takeaway was that they tried to present some idea as universal when it
really required the culture of the researcher in the geographical area the
researcher was studying[1]. The second problem is that they didn't understand
what they were studying. They didn't think that way.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are some amazing researchers whose results were
really useful, but the lack of true rigor in many of these studies is just
poor. Don't get me started about the damn math errors or "correlation does not
imply causation" arguments.

1) Community risk factor studies have to be the worst. The number of them that
only studied urban settings, but believed their results applied to rural areas
is astounding.

~~~
spartango
While my inclination is to agree with your critical view of social science
research, I think picking at this example misses the point of the article.

The idea that 'hivemind' discussions are drowning out 'other' viewpoints has
merit with respect to this forum. There are copious examples, from role-of-
government discussions to technical preferences.

Indeed, there are cases where the community massively promotes dubious science
that it finds agreeable.

We would be foolish to throw out this author's commentary because one of his
examples is not bulletproof.

~~~
bcoates
That assumes that the purpose of HN is to be a debate site, or a 20th century
"fairness doctrine" media outlet, or a town-hall style public forum. I do not
think any HN is any of those things or well-suited to become one.

Most of the useful and interesting things that come out of HN are in threads
that assume the answer to the big question and make some interesting point
about the details.

------
andrewcooke

       Pope remains Catholic
       12 points by BCM43 56 minutes ago | flag | discuss
    
       Bear shits in wood
       32 points by BCM43 21 minutes ago | flag | discuss

~~~
001sky
_But what is important is that the ongoing debates between these opinions be
driven by facts_

~~~
Karunamon
If there's no further facts, what's the point? If discussions 1 through 99
with a given set of facts have produced nothing of any value, why would #100?

This is why I think the "techies are sexist" articles are joining the "NSA is
evil" articles on the flag pile. There's more often than not no new
information, and predictable, boring (and in some cases, flame-filled)
conversation follows.

By all means, kill this crap and let something more deserving and interesting
take its place.

The only reason I'm not flagging this article is because it's shown itself to
be popular and I'd probably lose the ability as a result. This article is
straight up meta noise.

------
the_watcher
Flamewars != disagreements. Discouraging flamewars (namecalling,
counterproductive arguing that devolves into ad hominem and unrelated attacks)
doesn't mean it kills stories that generate disagreement and discussion. I've
had many a disagreement in HN threads, been convinced that my original stance
was wrong, and (I believe) convinced others that their original stance was
wrong (or incomplete, or to change something about it). I've also learned a
lot from simply posting what my understanding of an issue is and letting those
more familiar add to it. The fact that HN does not want to go the way of
Usenet/Reddit/4chan/name a forum doesn't make it an echo chamber.

I hope people disagree with me in this thread and prove my point.

~~~
kmfrk
"Flamewar" is such a Paul Graham term that doesn't really help with dealing
with the problem.

I'd rather use the reddit terminology of "controversial discussions" where
people are coming from very different places.

I think the problems with Hacker News has more to do with a failure to account
for those situations over the echo chamber discussions where everyone is in
(borderline-insufferable) agreement.

~~~
nailer
> "Flamewar" is such a Paul Graham term

We were discussing flame wars on Slashdot before News.YC (ahem, Hacker News)
even existed. People on the internet before then were discussing flame wars on
usenet (as the parent post mentions).

~~~
VLM
We had perfectly good flamewars on BBSes in the 80s, and it only got worse
once fidonet sprung up.

And before that on ham radio bands like 80M and to a lesser extent 20M we had
plenty of people arguing over basically nothing since... I donno 1920s or so?

------
yummyfajitas
The author's sole example is incorrect. Paul Graham did not dismiss any peer
reviewed research. The original article provided no argument (peer reviewed or
otherwise) asserting that natural born programmers were a myth - the cited
research merely argued that the belief in natural born programmers was
harmful. Paul Graham gave an anecdote explaining why he believed in natural
born programmers.

~~~
spindritf
Exactly. I hate when people do that -- cite an argument that got torn to
shreds as if it was widely accepted.

------
crusso
The whole argument of the article is a non-starter:

 _Building a social echo chamber risks marginalising us from the rest of
society, gradually becoming ignored and irrelevant as our self-reinforcing
opinions drift ever further away from the mainstream_

I don't consume movies, books, music, food, web sites, or much of anything
else because they're "mainstream".

I do so because they have a high degree of quality that holds my interests.
Mainstream is often the opposite of quality.

The more mainstream HN becomes, the less desirable it becomes. If I wanted
mainstream I'd spend more time looking at Slashdot and Reddit.

~~~
mseebach
Yes, I agree. "Echo-chamber" and "bubble" are features. Having a informative
and effective discussion at a high level, and having opinions moved,
predicates a high degree of common ground.

Effectively challenging somebody's worldview doesn't begin with "everything
you consider true is false, now listen to me" as is sometimes the preferred
method of radicals. Being bombarded with information and viewpoints you
consider wrongheaded doesn't expand your horizon, it galvanises you.

But when a person I have a lot in common with and agree with on many issues
says something that I don't instinctively agree with, I listen and at the very
least make sure I understand the full argument before I decide whether I think
it's wrong.

~~~
011011100
An echo chamber fosters confidence in a single perspective, or a small subset
of many perspectives. And not everything we speak about is mathematical and
can be formalized so that we can have confidence in a single perspective
(social, political issues).

Can you, in particular, handle being confident in one perspective and being
able to acknowledge, understand, and evaluate another? Maybe. Can most people?
I don't think so.

"Having a informative and effective discussion at a high level, and having
opinions moved, predicates a high degree of common ground."

We can agree on definitions, but that's not necessarily an echo chamber. An
echo chamber, or the negative kind of echo chamber, is when a
(nonmathematical, nonformal) perspective or conclusion is reinforced by the
entire community.

Example: "everybody has the same opportunities and therefore everybody is
equally capable of achieving success". You get people on hacker news asserting
this _all the time_. This is not a definition. This is dogma.

"Being bombarded with information and viewpoints you consider wrongheaded
doesn't expand your horizon, it galvanises you."

Key phrase: "[ideas] you consider wrongheaded". Nobody has all the right ideas
from the start. A priori, there is no reason to think that you will never
encounter any ideas which appear wrongheaded to you _at first_.

------
znowi
Abundance of throw-away accounts to express a potentially unpopular opinion is
a good evidence of a groupthink environment. People either afraid to lose
karma or be scrutinized or otherwise upset the mods.

I can often see people opening their comments with a hefty preamble, which
goal is to justify the following controversial opinion, in hopes that it will
not bring or at least lessen the wrath of the mob.

And of course people like their idols, too. When PG makes a comment - it's a
godsend and instantly attracts the fervent following. In a similar manner,
there's no lack of ardent supporters of Google that will rationalize any move
by the company in a way that is good for the world.

~~~
jlgreco
> _Abundance of throw-away accounts to express a potentially unpopular opinion
> is a good evidence of a groupthink environment._

It is evidence of nothing more than somebody wanting to make a poorly
considered comment without the negative ramifications associated with typing
before you think. HN _loves_ people who are willing to be contrarian. The
'leaders' list is absolutely littered with people who spend most of their time
disagreeing with the bulk of the site. They get upvoted, not downvoted,
because they express their disagreement _well_.

Throwaway commenters typically get downvoted not because they are going
against the grain but because they make very low quality comments.

------
ctdonath
Seems his prime complaint is that resonating consternation is aggressively
removed, giving an undue illusion of peace and harmony - and somehow that's a
bad thing.

Some issues are social hot buttons, with a roughly even split (if not in
actual numbers, then in energy exerted in pushback against the opposing view),
roughly equal validity to each perspective, and pretty much no chance of one
side reversing their view en masse in short order. Repeated prolonged verbose
heated arguments over these subjects will not lead to any meaningful
consensus. Their presence tends to erupt as a tangent or non-sequitur to
another discussion, destroying the overall thread in a wave of verbose
hysteria. Nothing is served by their recurrence; we all know there's a
dramatic split on views regarding the subject, we are each settled in our own
views thereon, and frequent re-hashing the subject just sours the environment
and encourages participants to seek more sensible discussions elsewhere. Ergo,
_there 's no point in letting these recur_. PG is right in weighting the
algorithm so such destructive & pointless discussions tend to disappear.

Yes, we know such disagreements exist. A policy of "not here, guys" is a
_good_ thing. Yes, the issues being suppressed are of great sociopolitical
importance; please recognize that decent people can disagree over them, please
agree to disagree, and resolving that disagreement will _not_ happen here -
but continued rehashing thereof _will_ create a toxic environment.

------
mortice
This is just a natural consequence of Hacker News not being a free market. The
state controls of the karma system practically guarantee inefficiency in the
free exchange of ideas. We need to stop subsidizing mediocrity.

------
mwfunk
Not every forum is obligated to be as democratic and decentralized as 4chan or
Reddit. I like HN _because_ it's more focused, and in some cases more
aggressively moderated, even if the mechanisms for doing so are more
opaque/blunt/arbitrary/etc. than in other forums. If HN was the only place on
the web to discuss anything, I would be much more concerned about the points
raised by this article. Fortunately it's not.

------
jiggy2011
Is there any online discussion place that isn't to some degree an echo
chamber?

~~~
lmm
4chan. Anonymous (well, you can use a trip, but you'll be mocked for it). No
downvotes. Very limited moderation, and what there is has a lot of
transparency.

There's, inevitably, a lot of low-level trolling, but you also get some
amazingly original insights.

~~~
sillysaurus2
_4chan [...] amazingly original insights._

On /b/? Where?

~~~
angersock
/diy/ has some really great maker resources, /g/ has good consumer information
(mixed in with a _lot_ of flamebait; daily programming threads are useless),
the cooking board and the comics board have some good stuff.

Basically, the reason it can do these things is that nobody takes themselves
too seriously--the whole affair is rather tongue in cheek.

------
MichaelAza
"There are no social problems in the technology industry. We have always been
at war with Eastasia."

Boy oh boy, I sure love me some Orwell references.

Referencing 1984 should be on par with referencing Hitler. It's just a lazy
debate tactic. If you have a good point you can make it without resorting to
these much-too-often used references.

Orwell himself went against it his essay "Politics and the English Language".
Read it. It'll do you good.

~~~
jlgreco
I don't see any particular reason to eschew common or obvious references to
history or literature because they are easy or common. If that is _honestly_
something that bothered us, we would be complaining at the shear number of
western authors who have been falling back on biblical allusion, or greek
mythology for centuries (both in fiction and otherwise). It is _easy_ to
reference The Tower of Babel, or the story of Icarus, but we don't complain
when people do.

 _(I know, I know, being an easy comparison isn 't the real reason we complain
about references to Hitler. I don't find the real reasons to be compelling
either.)_

------
scott_s
Hacker News is a meta-experiment on confirmation bias. In every meta-
discussion I see on the "bias" in HN, there is always someone saying "HN is
biased against X" and "HN is biased against _not_ X". It's in the comments
linked in this story, and I see it all over HN itself. My best explanation for
that is an individual's confirmation bias.

------
thetabyte
Especially after pg's response to the blog post about sexual assault at
CodeMash, I wonder—why can't the flamewar detector just disable comments?

I tend to have a lot of respect for pg, and found his apology for what
happened in that thread to be admirable. Whether or not preventing discussion
of the issue on HN is positive or negative...I have very complex feelings on
the issue, and see valid arguments on both sides.

What I do not have mixed feelings about, however, is that these issues need to
be put front and center, so that people in our industry a) know they exist b)
know how common they are c) are inspired to make personal effort to fix it. I
would hope that pg agrees.

If he does, why not make such stories, when they set off the flamewar
detector, maintain their ranking, but disable comments? That way, the issue is
still raised, and people are still alerted to it, but it prevents the (some
believe) "unproductive" discussion.

~~~
pg
The output of the flamewar detector isn't binary.

~~~
Zak
If the flamewar detector takes content in to account, could it consider the
overall tone of the discussion and the content of each new comment and
selectively kill new comments that seem flame-like?

I wrote a moderation bot to use on a political subreddit that used a text
classifier to determine whether comments should be deleted. A goal was to
delete flame comments rapidly. It worked, but reddit's reply notifications
limited its effectiveness.

Of note: the phrase "you are a" ranked higher for the flame category than any
particular insult.

------
drcode
What HN should do is add a feature where readers can upvote stories so they
can have their say about what is on the front page. This would address OP's
concerns.

</sarcasm>

~~~
mjg59
Stories receive upvotes and reach the front page. Certain topics then tend to
be aggressively flagged and vanish off the front page no matter how many
upvotes they have.

~~~
jasonlotito
I don't see an issue with that. There are other venues for discussing certain
things. This isn't to say that these topics are bad, just that at the time,
they really don't belong here.

~~~
untog
But the principle feels odd to me. Flags appear to be more powerful than
upvotes. So a minority of users can remove stories the majority wants to see.

~~~
jasonlotito
> So a minority of users can remove stories the majority wants to see.

You mean, they want to see it here. And that's the problem. Just because a
majority want to see it doesn't mean it should be seen here. And yes, a
minority of users who've proven themselves over the years to understand the
difference between on-topic and off-topic should have some power of this
process.

HN is curated, and it's not just curated by the majority. And me, and many
others are fine with that. It's what makes HN the way it is. Removing that
effectively turns HN into Reddit.

------
elp1stolero
A wise man once said,

"Seeking clarity is more valuable than agreement."

That changed the way I think about writing, and sharing my opinions or
discussing other people's ideas. If you go into a disagreement looking to
better understand what led the other party to their beliefs, you typically
have a more mature and interesting discussion. Plus, _why_ someone believes
something I completely disagree with is more interesting than the what,
anyway. It is likely in the end that you both may agree to disagree, (a lost
art in this age), but at least you can converse respectfully about complex
ideas like adults.

------
NovemberWest
Funny, my concerns about the social climate here are rather different. But I
suspect writing this type of article is probably not the way to fix things.
When people feel attacked, they get defensive and tend to become more
entrenched, not less, due to trying to justify their behavior.

------
ThomPete
Well culture is an echo chamber. It does not mean it's bad.

I see it as there is a certain culture here, one which i happen to be in
agreement with most of the time, while there is still room for dissent.

~~~
mortice
no there isnt

~~~
ThomPete
:)

------
theorique
In other words, a place focused on particular subjects (technology,
programming, science) collects people with similar life experiences,
interests, worldviews, etc.

~~~
ginko
What does having an interest in technology, programming and science have to do
with the huge libertarian/pro-capitalist bias HN has?

~~~
tonyarkles
I think the pro-capitalist bias comes from the fact that a lot of people here
are entrepreneurial. The site is hosted by a company that funds startups.

The libertarian part? I'm not so sure there, but I'd guess that it comes from
a sense of "I'm just trying to build my business, it'd be awesome if a bunch
of silly regulations and crap would get out of my way"

------
makerops
I tend to agree with the premise of the article, but found this line from a
self described "big government" type, funny:

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

~~~
tehwalrus
big government != mind control.

EDIT: to add, I thought that Orwell actually wrote an essay called "I am on
the left" although I can't now find it. He was definitely not right wing - he
was just very critical of communism as a supposedly left wing system.

~~~
pjc50
Orwell participated in the Spanish Civil War, which had two "left" sides
(anarchist-syndicalist versus communist) versus the "right" (monarchist-
fascist).

Within the Communist side, there were further factions (NKVD:Stalinist,
POUM:other Marxist). Orwell joined POUM. As a result, he was condemned by
Stalinists and had to flee back to England. He spent much of his career
warning against Stalinism, from a position on what might be called the social
democrat left.

~~~
tehwalrus
I knew that the British communists (funded by Moscow) refused to give him a
journalist visa for Spain, because he wouldn't promise to write whatever they
told him to. His writing on Barcelona 1936 is very good, and I visited "Orwell
Street"[1] there recently.

[1] It's obviously not called that, and it may be a square not a street, but I
remember the street sign. :)

------
EliRivers
_Stories that appear to challenge the narrative that good programmers are just
naturally talented tend to vanish._

Wait, is that the common narrative? Surely the only people who believe that
are the elderly, who just can't shake the "child genius" idea of programmers
they were fed in the seventies and eighties?

------
trendspotter
The comment section of this article is a social echo chamber of a critique of
a social echo chamber.

------
elchief
My stuff has been on the front page twice, and I'm a left wing, big government
Canadian.

Some people can be a little cranky, we're computer guys ffs, but I think the
discourse here is pretty civil and open minded.

~~~
MartinCron
The discourse here is the worst, except for the discourse everywhere else.

------
steven2012
HN is privately run by pg. He's allowed to set the rules whichever way he
wants.

Just because the author wants it to be run a certain way doesn't mean that it
should. If he doesn't like how it's done and thinks that issues that he
believes are important should be discussed, he should make his own news
aggregator site, instead of trying to hijack an already-established site for
his own agenda.

If the majority start disagreeing with the curation of HN articles, then they
will leave to other places, like reddit. And frankly, I'm not sure that pg
even cares if this happens, he didn't start HN to increase his popularity or
his influence.

~~~
gfodor
Uh no. You can criticize HN while also claiming pg has the right to do what he
wants. Oh look, the article does just that:

"Hacker News is a privately run site and nobody's under any obligation to
change how they choose to run it. But the focus on avoiding conflict to such
an extent that controversial stories receive less exposure than ones that fit
people's existing beliefs doesn't enhance our community. "

~~~
steven2012
Oh look, I never once said the author wasn't allowed to criticize the way HN
was run. I said that if he wants something different, then do it himself
instead of trying to hijack HN for his purposes.

~~~
VLM
That's nonsense as management advice. The best way to implement a superior
solution is to convince someone to implement it not do it yourself. Delegate!

If you have a better way to shovel stuff in bags, the most efficient and
profitable way to implement "shovel stuff in bags 2.0" is to convince the guy
in charge of 1.0 to upgrade, not go to the immense effort of creating a
competitor, or start shoveling yourself. At least not as the very first step.

If you want to make a competitor, just do it, you don't need "cover" of some
minor 1.0 vs 2.0 issue. Either way its not workin.

------
mattmaroon
Hacker News was a social echo chamber long before there was flagging or
flamewar detection. I think it's just an inherent law in any small, passionate
community.

------
Steko
Hilariously, this article appears to be flagged far below it would naturally
score atm.

------
gnarbarian
Anyone who believes in big government has never contracted for one at length.

------
squozzer
So are CSPAN, NPR, and most media outlets. Duh.

------
BigChiefSmokem
We are all pretty like-minded and I see nothing wrong with that. This isn't
Congress, it's the Hacker News Social Club. You can leave when you like.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
When you write to hacker news to say hacker news is an echo chamber I go into
an infinite loop and run out of stack space, thanks a lot.

