
Ask HN: How can HN be more addictive than Reddit? - HNLurker2
This website isn&#x27;t even designed to be addictive.
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ksec
Signal To Noise Ratio. I registered my account on ~2012, but I have been
reading HN since 2010, and I didn't participate because the quality of the
comment were way too high, and I am not sure if I could make any decent
contribution.

And it isn't really HN that is being additive. It is the community, being
sensible and professional. It also avoid ( mostly ) all religion and politics
debate, or basically things that is hard to argue about Right or wrong. Unless
it is something that absolutely needs to be addressed, and the threshold for
them seems to be very well managed on HN so far.

You also get huge ( And Surprising ) diversity of professionals on HN. Over
the near decade of reading on HN, I have seen Doctors, Medical Research, Oil
Refinery, NASA, Nuclear Research Scientist, Tunnel Building Engineers,
Professional Musicians, Food Scientist, Chef, Collage Professors, Investment
Bankers, Hedge Fund Managers... and a lot more.

I have often wondered, why are they even on HN? They don't speak often on
technology related topics, but once you touch on their special subject they
offer huge depth of valuable information that goes beyond any normal Internet
comment. You will then spend next few hours or even days reading on lots of
material before you could even comprehend most of that writing.

Reddit, while being fun, doesn't really have this sense of professionalism.

~~~
craftyguy
> Signal To Noise Ratio

I find the Noise to Signal ratio on HN to be incredibly high.

For example, multiple posts per day[0] reminding us that facebook is 'bad' and
'spying on us' (no shit). When whatevercoin was a thing, there were many posts
per day about how bit whatevercoins were the
{best,worst,crashing,soaring,smart,dumb,future}.

HN started off with some direction, but now it seems to be turning into the
fake internet point machine that many reddit sites are: where folks are
rewarded for (re)posting whatever the 'hot topic' is of the month, and
bolstered by millions of tangential or anectodal comments from people who
never made it past the headline.

0\. [http://funkyimg.com/i/2S1gE.png](http://funkyimg.com/i/2S1gE.png)

~~~
sgillen
Is it “incredibly” high though? I think you have legitimate criticisms but
compared to other news aggregator/ social media sites I think the quality is
very high.

~~~
craftyguy
Compared to sites like lobste.rs and some super moderated topic-specific
subreddits, it is 'incredibly' high.

~~~
rc-1140
Funny you should mention lobsters; while it doesn't happen as often as it does
here, that site also likes to bash us on our collective noggins that
$internetThing is bad and spying on us as if we didn't get it. Probably the
only reason it doesn't happen with the frequency it happens here is that
lobsters has a much smaller active poster userbase.

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scarface74
HN is my “safe place”. Hardly any discussion about politics, religion, or any
other topic that no one ever changes their minds about.

I do my part. I flag submissions that are overly political even if I agree
with them.

~~~
wingerlang
> Hardly any discussion about politics, religion

I don't get a lot of this on reddit as well, unless I purposefully wander into
related subreddits. Maybe the odd trump reference comes up sometimes.

~~~
mcny
» Hardly any discussion about politics, religion, or any other topic that no
one ever changes their minds about.

Maybe I don't understand the word "politics" but I think most of my posts are
inherently political in nature. When we talk about how we need to increase
taxes and decrease public spending, it is a political statement. When I say
most people who don't have children should seriously consider not having any
children and those who do have children should consider not having any more,
it is also a political statement.

Politics isn't just "Orange man bad" or "ten feet higher".

~~~
vertex-four
When I say “I deserve to exist”, that’s unfortunately a strongly political
statement. And when people can afford to say “I avoid politics”, that is in
itself political.

~~~
scarface74
I have strong political views that I express other places and I am definitely
not in a “privileged” demographic that can afford not to be political - I just
don’t express them here except sometimes economics and try to back them up
with as unbiased credible sources as I can.

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anentropic
IMHO it's the content that is addictive rather than the gamification
mechanisms (though they presumably serve to improve the content)

I haven't found a better source for interesting and relevant links

And then because of HN's popularity you can often find relevant _people_ (such
as the author or noted experts) commenting in the threads (as well as the
inevitable noise, such as myself)

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jaabe
I think it’s because FOMO is rampant in tech and HN is the most relevant
source for it. It offers the best of all the technology, programming and
science subreddits combined with high quality news outlets, and it does so
with better moderation.

The thing about Facebook, Reddit and other social media’s is that they aren’t
all that interesting. You can only look at so many videos of cats before it
gets boring, well maybe not cats, but I think you get my meaning. I think we
get used to the SoMe news feed, and unless it does something that is actually
relevant, it grows stale.

HN does something relevant, or at least something that feels relevant. I’m not
sure it’s really build to be less addictive, because adrenaline is a hell of a
drug, but it may not be intentionally addictive.

I see a lot of the same on LinkedIn, which is really, really popular among
managers. Or twitter and journalists. FOMO is just an amazing way to keep
users coming back, even if it isn’t necessarily a positive experience.

~~~
le-mark
Well, HN does do something, it's currently the highest level of discourse I
know of on the internet today. The greatest pearl to muck ratio one could say.
I agree the quality has declined in recent years, as these things do with
popularity, but the fact remains. Until something better comes along, I'll
keep scanning here to find the pearls among the muck. And contribute my own
when I can.

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new_guy
I wouldn't consider either HN or Reddit to be addictive.

I guess it depends on a persons mental state though and if they've anything
else going on. Lack of friends in 'real' life etc might lead people to over
compensate on platforms like this.

A good read on what makes a product addictive is Hooked: A Guide to Building
Habit-Forming Products ( [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hooked-Guide-Building-
Habit-Forming...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hooked-Guide-Building-Habit-
Forming-Products/dp/1494277530) )

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krapp
Any website that employs a karma system uses a positive feedback loop to
encourage continual engagement. That, plus the cultural distaste many here
have for the "mainstream", particularly social media, leads some to use HN as
their primary, if not only, source for both news and online social
interaction.

~~~
walterstucco
Or It will create a culture of the single thought.

It happened to me for not being nice with the U.S. while bad talks about EU is
widely accepted

After two years I'm still shadowbanned for no real reason...

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mirceal
I would not describe HN (or Reddit as a matter of fact) as addictive.

For me, HN is about the quality of content and quality of the comments on the
said content.

It’s almost like no matter how obscure something is, if it’s interesting
enough to hit the front page you’ll have at least a couple of people that have
deep expertise on it and can give you their honest opinion.

It’s also about discovering things and learning about things you already knew.

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sjg007
HN satisfies the short term dopamine reward circuit for a population that is
largely self moderating, monitoring and interested in the same techie type
news. So it is self reinforcing and content is continually accruing so you
develop an urge to check back in. Email use to be this way for a lot of
people, Twitter too, FB definitely, etc...

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superasn
I think it is because of the comments here that sometimes offer even more
value and insight than the linked story and article. Reddit too has some
really good comments occasionally but the SNR is high with comments from
novelty accounts, "This." , etc.

This could be one of the reasons why people prefer to read news here.

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veddox
Aside from the expertise represented in the HN crowd, I think another key
factor is the self-reinforcing culture Y Combinator managed to build here. The
guidelines aren't just some random document, they actually describe the spirit
of the place - and the community strongly enforces them. This means that
uncivil or contentles comments are unusually rare, which drastically improves
the quality of the discussion.

Of course, the system isn't perfect (and regularly leads to the semi-justified
claim that outlying opinions aren't welcome here), but on the whole it works
very well.

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rakoo
Along the other comments stating that SNR is much higher here than on Reddit,
I feel that the lightweightness of HN and the fact that all pages are loaded
instantly actually contributes to a state of mind where you want to refresh
just to know what's new. When it takes more time to refresh you're not as
eager to discover what's new.

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bibyte
Why do you think it is more addictive ? From my experience Reddit's open
voting system is much more addicting.

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idclip
Why? Why make it addictive? Why abuse human nature on what is a website run by
adults, for adults, and is doing fine without being turned into a raging nest
of wasps?

Go away.

Edit: we have lives to live. I personally avoid addictive shit with vengeance.

I quit smoking, I quit alcohol. I quit facebook. I would quit HN if it ever
became “addictive” or anything other than the technology safe harbor i find it
to currently be.

Yes, I feel strongly about this.

~~~
DavidSJ
The OP is not requesting that HN be more addictive. They're asking why it is
already.

~~~
HNLurker2
Elizer once said in a blogpost don't click on the link that goes to HN to not
create another internet addiction:
[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cyzXoCv7nagDWCMNS/you-re-
cal...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cyzXoCv7nagDWCMNS/you-re-calling-who-
a-cult-leader) and that was 10 years ago. Looking back on what I've done all
year seems like I sent hours and hours on reddit and HN basically doing
nothing.

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krm01
Can’t really compare HN with all of Reddit. I think Hn is a very good
subreddit.

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throway88989898
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huBskeb-
syk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huBskeb-syk)

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fakghy
Absolutely no. Hackernews do shadow banning too much.

I wonder morals of this platform quite often.

Freedom of speech... What a joke!

