
PG: The biggest source of stress for me at YC was running HN - ilamont
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1282052801347100675
======
ufmace
I think there's a larger point in what he said. Basically all current social
media ends up optimizing for creating outrage, spawning mobs, less thoughtful
discussion and more vitriolic arguments, etc. It's becoming a real concern to
me that this is going to drive us into some kind of civil war or something if
we don't find some way to check it.

The outrage seems to be like a drug. Nothing generates engagement quite like
it, even if it's toxic in the long-term. So all social media platforms that
embrace it grow bigger until they become near-monopolies, and all that don't
so far have had a hard time growing userbases, making money, and generally
fade into irrelevance.

It would be a real service to society IMO if we could find a way to somehow
generate enough engagement and energy to challenge the big players without the
outrage culture.

~~~
sowbug
A little over 10 years ago I started a social network for neighborhoods.
Instead of people joining the network, houses would join, and people proved
they lived in a house by having us send them a postcard with a code on it.
Incidentally, while searching for a domain, I even tried to track down and buy
"nextdoor.com," which I learned a year or so later had been in stealth mode.

I first did a small launch in my own neighborhood to tune the product before
going broad. It was during this phase that I discovered the toxicity of social
networks. I was either a witness to, or drawn into, every petty bickering
match on my side of my zip code. I am certain my product gave a wider voice to
the wrong people. I should have known; ten years earlier I was an officer of
my homeowners association, and it was the same thing, but face-to-face.

This wasn't the only reason I shut down the project, but it was the biggest. I
thought I'd be bringing people together. I was right, but I had incorrectly
assumed that doing so would be a good thing.

~~~
em-bee
bringing people together is right, but it's not enough. you also have to set
the tone, and block out hostility from the start.

one way to do that is to make friends with neighbors, one at a time. if there
is a conflict, help solve that conflict friendly and peacefully. develop a
reputation for a friendly atmosphere. have neighboorhood activities, for
adults or children, work on causes such as cleaning up the neighborhood,
fixing play ground equipment, helping neighbors with difficulties. effectively
you need to build the community.

the thing is, this can only be done by people who live there, and the tools
used are almost secondary. any chat room will do. the barrier to join is not a
proof of address but a proof of goodwill, verified by an existing member.

~~~
sowbug
You're right. While I'm sure the project could have been better designed to at
least facilitate those sorts of constructive interactions, it was, overall,
yet another technical solution to a social problem (YATSTASP, if that's not
already an acronym). We engineers are fond of such solutions, even if they
don't work, because they're what we know how to build.

------
_bxg1
I honestly think the only solution is for individuals to recuse themselves
from those networks (I say on one of those networks), lower the trust they
place in digital information, etc. It's become clear that the downward spiral
is intrinsic to the medium itself (or possibly just the scale). I don't
believe that any amount of technology, or product-rethinking, or UX will
change that. We just weren't meant to interact this way. My only hope is that
people eventually get disenchanted or burned-out enough that they simply stop
engaging.

I replied to the original tweet too ("what would you do if you were Jack
Dorsey?"). I said I'd shut the whole thing down.

~~~
asah
Sadly, the level headed people recuse themselves which only adds to the
toxicity.

~~~
newacct583
Actually what happens is the level headed people _on one side of an issue
divide_ recuse themselves, leaving a "seemingly level-headed consensus echo
chamber" behind. IMHO, that's worse. This account exists largely to counter
exactly that trend. It's important (to me) that newcomers to the site don't
get the idea that "hackers" are all fringe libertarians on every non-technical
subject.

~~~
dang
This site may _feel_ like a "consensus echo chamber" but in reality it is
nothing remotely close to that. I think you may be running into the notice-
dislike bias:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment).
Since you report noticing fringe libertarians, we can be sure that you dislike
fringe libertarianism. We can also be sure that _they_ have just the opposite
picture of HN, since everyone crafts their picture in the image of what they
dislike, without realizing that they're doing that. It just feels like an
objective picture. I can list dozens of examples of this, but I'll restrain
myself for once and spare you.

Unfortunately, these extremely contradictory subjective images of HN seem to
be a consequence of its structure, being non-siloed:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20non-
siloed&sort=byDate&type=comment). This creates a paradox where precisely
_because_ the site is less divisive it feels _more_ divisive—in the sense that
it feels to people like it is dominated by their enemies, whoever their
enemies may be. That's extremely bad for community, and I don't know what to
do about it, other than post a version of this comment every time it comes up.

Thanks for caring about level-headeness, in any case.

~~~
lefstathiou
Dang, I respectfully disagree.

Just the other day I noticed HN take a heavy hand on removing an article that
hit the homepage about a virologist publishing a paper that suggested the only
logical explanation for COVID is that it’s manufactured.

There are absolutely topics and perspectives that are not welcomed on HN, as
the lead moderator it would be unwise in my opinion to think otherwise (given
your biases would be the most threatening to an open forum) and you naturally
would have a tough time identifying the absence of a perspective you don’t
share.

As an example, I would challenge you to pick five articles that discuss unions
that hit the homepage on HN and see what % of threads (and how much of the up
vote they accounted for) were inherently anti union. I would also be sure to
give only partial credit for threads that added boiler plate sentences saying
something along the lines of “while I believe in the value of XYZ” because
that’s basically a requirement to take any contrarian (to liberal / Silicon
Valley ideology) or conservative view on this site. I can give you a laundry
list of topics that will show this trend.

From my (biased) perspective (and from someone outside of the valley reading
this site religiously for 13 years) HN is increasingly hostile to certain
perspectives (and I’m not talking about social issues here). I don’t care much
about it - I just opt out - which is the point.

Why not run a poll about it?

~~~
Ghjklov
What was the article? Now I'm curious

~~~
gus_massa
Probably " _The most logical explanation is that Covid-19 comes from a
laboratory_ " [https://www.minervanett.no/corona/the-most-logical-
explanati...](https://www.minervanett.no/corona/the-most-logical-explanation-
is-that-it-comes-from-a-laboratory/361860)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23725966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23725966)
(flagged, 18 points, 8 days ago, 4 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23727763](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23727763)
(10 points, 8 days ago, 3 comments)

[Personal opinion: The evidence is not enough to prove that is was
created/improved/selected in a lab. It has a few "lucky" features, but normal
coronavirus don't cause pandemics, so we already know it is a "lucky" case.]

18 points by haltingproblem 8 days ago | flag | hide | past | favorite | 4
comments

"

~~~
mirimir
I've seen an article claiming that it spread from the Wuhan Institute of
Virology. But not in the sense that they created, improved or selected it. I
gather that they were simply isolating and studying viruses from bats that had
been collected in southern China. And they were doing that based on concerns
about new pandemics, given experience with SARS and MERS, and the expectation
that there would be more zoonotic jumps from bat populations.

------
kubanczyk
Mods, thank you all for saving the day every day. Thank you a hundred times.
(On behalf of these 99% of lurkers that benefit your work the most but never
say anything.) (Flag this.)

~~~
Sebb767
Yes! Dang is doing such a great job. We tend to have really awesome
discussions here and for the first few months on this site, I didn't even
realize it was moderated. Hats off to him.

~~~
verroq
Dang does a good job? He does a good job of shutting down discussion that
strays from the leftist agenda. Deleting anything that doesn't conform to the
SV brand of wokeness while leaving up comments from leftist extremeists.

It has become impossible to talk about anything slightly controversial that
detractors don't even try since they'll just get downvoted and flagged into
oblivion.

~~~
DanBC
> since they'll just get downvoted and flagged into oblivion.

That's other users, not dang.

~~~
verroq
This generally occurs after Dang has shut down the discussion for an
arbitrarily reason, usually for “being inflammatory” when more “inflammatory”
leftist commentary, usually in the same thread, are left untouched.

------
cheeze
On the flipside - Let's not act like ycombinator doesn't benefit from hn.
YCombinator gets free advertising to a _TON_ of good engineers for their
companies roles (the posts that you can't comment on that mention X random
ycombinator company is looking for Y role). Surely that has to be worth
something...

I don't disagree with pg's statement here, but IMO yc gets pretty big benefit
from running the forum.

~~~
musicale
Presumably one or two good hires would more than compensate for years of
running HN, but forum moderation is still a difficult and stressful job.

~~~
swyx
is dang paid to do this? how does it work?

~~~
dang
Yes.

------
dsr_
The key to getting good discussions is to not have a profit motive coupled to
eyeballs.

HN doesn't show ads, doesn't care about growth.

Large newspapers had strict firewalls between advertising, journalism and
opinion -- but smaller papers had to fold to pressure from advertisers.

Subscription services need eyeballs badly -- but they need paying eyeballs,
which means that they need to offer more than just outrage -- but if they
don't show at least some of their content for free, they can't grow.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
That is plainly insufficient. There's serious outrage, polarization, and lack
of nuance on this site about a variety of topics. Privacy, anything google,
amazon, or Uber, gender and racial politics, Facebook, etc. There's more going
on here than the profit motive.

The problem isn't that these companies want to make a profit. The problem is
they make it easy for people to get what they want, and users seek out outrage
and polarization. I think that combined with the globalizing tendency of
ubiquitous, high bandwidth, low latency, broadcast-capable connections is a
real problem. But since I believe it's a human nature thing, I'm much less
sure of how to solve it, especially while respecting the free speech value.

~~~
xtracto
Using the fact that CmdrTaco commented in that twitter thread, i want to bring
into comment slashdot moderation system. I always thought it was better than
simple upvote/downvote because the "tags" (insightful, interesting,
flamebait,troll) enticed you to think twice about the modding, preventing
knee-jerk nodding reaction.

The fact that often the most voted comments on hacker news are the most
extreme (saying something is completely wrong) shows that we love correcting
people and will discount a good conversation in place of some virtual
approval.

~~~
hiccuphippo
Sometimes I vote something up because I want to see a good counterargument in
the replies. Should I not be doing this?

~~~
ufmace
I've done this at times to a well-written argument that I disagree with. Could
be just basic fairness, hoping to attract somebody to counter-argue, or
possibly to help it rise above more poorly-reasoned arguments for the same
thing, or even to make my own counter-argument post more visible.

~~~
vxNsr
Why don’t you offer your own counter? Just curious

~~~
ufmace
Sometimes I do. If I don't, it's probably because I just don't have the time
or energy to write a well-reasoned counter-argument at the moment. Or maybe
because I don't know enough, and don't feel like doing the research to support
what I think. Getting sucked into internet arguments at work or while working
on my own projects is just terrible for productivity and focus.

------
maxdata
Even after all these years I have no idea what Y combinator is or does, nor do
I care to learn. I just come here for news stories.

~~~
bpodgursky
Not that there's anything wrong with just reading the stories, but I'm a bit
incredulous that you haven't passively picked up the thesis, from the stories
about the investment changes, demo days, and all the uh... YC startups that
get discussed and front-paged.

~~~
pmoriarty
There were some years when there were a slew of "Here's what I learned from
applying to YC" stories, but those have mostly faded, and so have most
startup-focused stories.

Now HN is a mix of tech news and politics, and I'm not surprised that some HN
readers who are not interested in startups have no clue what YC is about.

~~~
freehunter
This has been a big concern of mine lately. I spend more time here than I used
to, but I increasingly get less and less value out of the time I spend here. I
used to come here to learn about bleeding-edge technology and startups and
cool ideas and things that geniuses were working on. Now when I come here I
almost always end up arguing politics, not because I want to but because those
are the stories that people actively comment on and I have poor self control.

The few tech stories that do make it through are far more pop-tech article
(right now NPR, BBC, New York Times, MSN, and Haaretz are all on the front
page... absolutely nothing to do with hackers or gratifying intellectual
curiosity) or talking about startups that are shutting down.

I'm tired of collapsing the inevitable "Macbooks are bad" thread and finding
out that was literally the only conversation under the article. I think the
mods do a great job of keeping the conversation civil, but a poor job of
enforcing "intellectual curiosity" like the guidelines call for.

~~~
meheleventyone
If I can offer advice, give your piece if you feel it matters and then move
on. One of the nice bits of HN is you can say your opinion and move on. There
are no reply notifications. I definitely ended up engaging on forums way more
than I should have. I quit one and used that to push myself out of commenting.
Now I spend some time commenting here but don’t let myself get pulled back in
to needless arguments. There’s a bunch of topics you can skip here and I
generally guess at the sentiment of the comment before jumping in. There’s a
few things that just end up rehashing the same arguments. Skip them and move
on.

~~~
frosted-flakes
> There are no reply notifications.

That's mostly true. It doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere and is not very
well-known, but dang maintains hnreplies.com, an email notification service
for HN. Apparently only 1860 users are signed up, but it's there.

In general, I agree with your advice. Very often I get halfway through writing
a comment, but delete it because I don't think it will spawn useful
conversation or be appreciated, whether it's because I'm being needlessly
argumentative, or the person I'm replying to is.

------
atum47
I got internet when I was 10 years old. I was one of the first ones in a small
city, Brazil. We had our first computer when I was about 4 or 5. So, when the
internet came, I already had 5 years of experience with computers. We all had
nicknames and IRC handles to talk anonymous on the internet. Eventually came
ICQ and we start having people as contact. I knew almost everyone in my city
who was on the internet. It didn't took long to understand that I was not
anonymous anymore. Although I had a nickname, I had also real connection with
my contacts and I knew who they were. When I was 17 internet was a thing most
people have, including people who never had a computer before. This people
would say things online that they wouldn't in the real world. I remember an
very rude email I got that someone sent my from their workplace. I just use
whois to get a phone number from the company, I then call them and explained
what happened, 10 minutes after the person who sent the email sent another
apologizing. As someone said in the comments: this "rage" you see online is
because we still can't punch each other through the screen (or cause it's very
rare when a shit thing someone does online have a real backlash). Me, who grew
up with a computer and in forums, IRC channels, regular chat rooms... already
had some kind of ethics. When my father (that besides being the one who got us
the computer) got on Facebook he had a fight with a lot of relatives because
of politics or some other nonsense like that. (imagine fighting someone over a
shitty politician who will never give a shit about you). I always wonder how
would I manage a social network or online community - I would try to have well
established rules and try my best to enforce them. But in the end on the day I
guess I would ban a lot of people and excluding a lot of groups. anyway, I
love HN and I think you are doing a great job, both you and Dang. Keep it up.

------
thaumaturgy
> _Don 't start a forum._

HN certainly has its faults, but it has also helped numerous people improve
their skills, find better jobs, share insights, start startups, build
companies. There should be no doubt that HN is a net positive, and if you
can't see that, then you are part of the problem with social media: you're so
focused on the negative aspects of a subject that you've lost perspective.

We need more and better forums, not fewer.

~~~
renewiltord
PG's advice is to each person. You can rest assured that I have no desire
whatsoever to do many things that are net positives to the world and are,
nonetheless, deleterious to my life.

------
nojvek
I do like hn promotes ShowHN. Seeing the mammoth projects, new startups,
weekends hacks, parodies is a lot more entertaining than the polarizing
discussions on the other social networks.

I just get a massive kick out of people building things and sharing them with
the world.

I’ll leave HN the day Show HN stops being a thing and all we see is how Google
released their new chat app or some company FAANG acquired for a bajillion
dollars.

------
EdJiang
Having run communities and forums in the past, it's definitely a lot of
thankless and time-sensitive work.

I'm reminded of this post:
[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-
kept-...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-gardens-
die-by-pacifism)

I think HN's done a reasonable job at keeping the community stable (thanks
@dang) but the recent backlash over the press incited by SSC and Clubhouse has
made see that the darker side of mob mentality exists on HN, too.

------
riyadparvez
I can certainly see his point. The more I grow older, the more I am convinced
to spend less time on internet interacting with people. Not only the anonymity
or pseudo-anonymity is a magnet for toxic people, it also brings out the worst
in people. Even disregarding the outright abuse or outrage, the opinions I see
on the internet is very hard to meet someone in real life who has that kind of
opinions.

Every Google related thread immediately becomes a thread of bashing Google's
history of killing products. I don't know how many times people need to have
the same conversation again and again. This has gotten to the point that I
don't open any Google related threads. I am here to read thoughtful
discussions, not some broken records again and again. Internet forum is hard.

~~~
Sebb767
> Not only the anonymity or pseudo-anonymity is a magnet for toxic people, it
> also brings out the worst in people.

For one, yes, but Facebook has clear names (usually) and still it degraded
quite a bit and hosts obscure trends such as flat eathers. So I don't think
anonymity is really all too important. Maybe it's rather that you can now find
like-minded people to strengthen your opinion, even when there are actually
really few overall.

------
JayInt
So, I run a company called
[https://www.localhalo.com/](https://www.localhalo.com/) it builds local
communities a bit like discord/slack but all geo-fenced.

We found that social utility is how you solve a LOT of these issues. If
someone is going to be negative on your platform then give them the 'action'
instead for that pain.

In local this is normally an issue with a neighbour, something for the HOA or
something for Local Gov't. Just make them slackbot-esque buttons/commands.
Give reacting features for others to support and you've turned decenters into
your most active patrons.

The trick with social utility is only giving access to solutions that better
everyone. People are lazy and if they can find a single way to do 80/20 of
their community wants it normally produces good-actors.

~~~
dang
You should post this as a Show HN when you're ready. I think the community
here would be interested to discuss it. See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)
and the tips at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638).

If you want, send a draft to hn@ycombinator.com and I'll try to help you with
feedback similar to how I help YC startups with their launches
([https://news.ycombinator.com/launches](https://news.ycombinator.com/launches)
\- that's a YC-only thing but Show HNs are similar). Just realize that I can't
necessarily reply quickly. The inbox can be brutal.

Same offer goes for anyone who wants some advice about how to present their
work to HN.

------
mw6621
I agree with his ultimate conclusion -- don't start a forum.

It is no fun being an internet referee.

~~~
pmoriarty
Does PG actually modertate HN?

I thought he had mods like dang to take care of it for him.

I'd be more interested to hear what dang thinks of HN than what PG thinks.

~~~
rapnie
You could read "The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News". It is a great
article.

[https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-
valley/th...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-
lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news)

Discussion at the time:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643052](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643052)

~~~
slavik81
It's rather silly, but until I read this article, I'd always assumed dang was
Asian.

~~~
StavrosK
The Chinese Da Ng?

~~~
frosted-flakes
Isn't Ng a Vietnamese name?

~~~
StavrosK
I thought so too, but Wikipedia said Chinese, so I went with it.

------
credit_guy
So here's a startup idea: create an HN-like forum for topics that are usually
avoided on HN. Such as politics.

And the only way to have a civil politics forum is to have some professional
moderator like dang who can step in and explain the rules to anyone who gets
carried away a bit too much. Little by little, the users get educated and
start enforcing the rules themselves, either via downvotes, or via actual
comments.

Wouldn't that be great? In an age of complete political polarization, to have
a sanctuary place on the internet where you can go and exchange thoughtful
ideas with considerate peers who may or may not share your political
alignment, but treat you with respect.

~~~
tux1968
Is it possible that we're overvaluing decorum? While the battles going on over
ideas on social media are base --- there is still progress. Ideas are being
put through the grinder and being put on display for all sorts of people who
might never have had that opportunity a few short years ago.

It's quite possible, that while it's hard to watch, it is just the growing
pains of a whole new chapter in the evolution of human thought. One that isn't
restricted to sophisticated and polished elites.

Maybe the real problem is our aversion to an all out brawl, rather than the
fight itself. It's possible that younger people will just be able to deal with
it better -- learn how to better cope with and ignore distractions like trolls
etc.

~~~
dvtrn
>Is it possible that we're overvaluing decorum?

Yes.

Speaking as a minority who sometimes gets downright _livid_ with the responses
here to issues where social-issu technology intersect that are simply phrased
eloquently and with “proper decorum” but are still pretty deleterious and
exclusionary in their markedly disparate impacts and results for people like
me-as more emotionally charged (rightfully, I will defend staunchly) comments
criticizing such thoughts and opinion turn grey and ultimately get flagged
into non-existence.

~~~
tchaffee
> Speaking as a minority

Thank you for speaking up. I often think of HN as ivory tower. It feels great
for people who have zero urgency to address social issues because those social
issues don't affect them in any way. In fact, those social issues might give
some of us an undeserved advantage.

It's not a surprise when you consider PG's own desires to forever be in an
ivory tower and to blame any criticism of his own faults on angry mobs. He's
never wrong in his own eyes and it's pretty clear that comes from a position
of privilege.

HN does achieve one goal: I do love it as a place to discuss intellectual
ideas. It does come at a cost of largely sweeping social issues under the
carpet.

I would love to see an HN with many of the same rules but where membership is
truly diverse and where minorities outnumber the privileged. An HN started by
a minority and that would not have PG's DNA. I imagine it having everything I
love about HN and perhaps a lot less of what I dislike about HN.

~~~
dvtrn
I’ve thought once or twice about starting such a forum, but it’d probably be a
bad idea because I have an incredibly fuse which probably won’t do well for
the community as a forum leader at large. And at this point in time-a
historically low tolerance for any manifestation of some of the bad-faith but
eloquently delivered “talking points” from people who hold court in various
ivory towers. That alone convinced me it’s not a good idea; plus PG’s general
advice of not starting a forum overall is probably good advice for anyone who
cherishes their mental health these days.

And the end of the day: There are other areas in real tangible life that I’ve
decided to focus this energy and righteous indignation towards that are far
more fulfilling, but I will still call things out here on HN where appropriate
about these types of intersecting issues, and I will take the downvotes but
I’m not gonna stop getting right up in people’s faces and challenging some of
these things when they come up.

------
arjie
In my opinion, losing most HN comments and using just the links would be a
great way to browse HN.

Here's some trivial code to accomplish that
[https://github.com/roshan/hnncnn/blob/master/hnncnn.js](https://github.com/roshan/hnncnn/blob/master/hnncnn.js)

~~~
coronadisaster
"... losing most HN comments would be a great way to browse HN"

Thanks for this comment /s

------
im3w1l
People were always like this. You just weren't able to see it, because you
were in an offline "filter bubble" of peaceful and reasonable people. There
have been countless civil wars in history after all.

~~~
ianai
No, what online media are doing is massive propaganda at scales and levels of
insidiousness unlike ever imaginable before now. Cambridge analytica for
instance targeted ads at people to maximize their outrage toward other
citizens. Before advertisements were much easier to avoid or ignore and
weren’t being used for outrage. Ads have to get clicks nowadays for revenue
and in the past they just had to be associated with wide viewership. People
click on what infuriates them more often than other content.

~~~
hindsightbias
Just because the medium is more diverse doesn’t mean it’s much different.

In 2009, the NYT started a series called “Disunion”, a day-by-day look back to
the Civil War 150 years prior. Filled with sampled newspapers, opinion pieces,
letters to the editor.

After a couple of months, it was quite clear how a country tore itself apart.
They didnt need ads or FB, all they needed were the paper owners and the
editors. They actually paused the series because (imo) the things said about
Lincoln in 1859 and Obama in 2009 were quite similar.

~~~
ianai
So they found a great way to highlight what was going on in current events and
canceled it? Now we’re left in the lurch.

------
mathgenius
After the demise of slashdot (around 2008?), I hung out on technocrat.net,
which was run by Bruce Perens. It was great, but then Perens decided to kill
it because it was too stressful to run. (If memory serves me correctly.) Then
I found HN.

Language is too fragile & brittle to convey most of what we would like it to
convey. People keep falling into this trap, and then getting irate when things
go off the rails. This is a terrible confusion to have: if the meaning is not
in the words, then where is it? The meaning is in the context, not in the
symbols.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Context _and_ intent.

Things go sideways when false assumptions are made. Assuming a safe community
is hostile is a path to unnecessary conflict. Assuming a well-intended
statement is intended to be malicious is a path to complete communication
meltdown.

PC-ness and call out culture has hype-reduced human communication to mere
words. That's not to how communication evolved.

Yes. Words matter. But they are not the way humans communicate.

~~~
ativzzz
> Words matter. But they are not the way humans communicate.

People communicate any way they can. On online forums, we have to communicate
with words as there is no other way (so far).

> Assuming a well-intended statement is intended to be malicious is a path to
> complete communication meltdown.

You're right, but this is just as much, and probably more so, the fault of the
writer than the reader. Because like you said, so much of our communication is
not using words, when we are limited to words, we have to be _extra_ careful
about which words we use and how we craft our message because the chance of
being misunderstood is much higher.

~~~
chiefalchemist
My fave comms goto is:

"It's not what you say, it's what they hear."

\- Frank Luntz

Unfortunately, it pre-dates cancel culture and such. We've allowed "always
assume the worst" to be normalized. We've made one (event) into a pattern.

Communication is a two way street. If one side (i.e., the receiver) is
intentionally undermining "the contract" then the processes is doomed. You
can't have a two-way process where one half is trying their best to
communicate, and the other is trying their best not to do so. It doesn't work
that way. Which is obvious at this point. Insanity is at an all time high.

~~~
ativzzz
> Insanity is at an all time high.

People have always been insane, we've just never been connected to so many
people simultaneously and have never experienced so much collective insanity
accessible anytime, anywhere.

> You can't have a two-way process where one half is trying their best to
> communicate, and the other is trying their best not to do so

This is impossible to prove, especially how many "trying their best to
communicate" efforts I've seen are simply not good enough. People suck at
communicating clearly just as much as they suck at receiving and processing
unclear communication, especially via text, and I bet people who think they
are communicating effectively are misjudging just how effective their
communication is. These people then tend to blame political affiliation for
their lack of communication skills, though of course any platform will tend to
be biased in some way or other.

But yes, communication is a two way street, and particularly with divisive
topics, neither the sender nor the receiver of the message is properly taking
into account people of differing opinions.

------
ksec
I do wonder what sort of traffic HN gets in terms of Page view. Would HN
consider self hosting an analytic like plausible or other cloud solution where
the information is public?

~~~
dang
These days around 5.5M page views daily and something like 5M unique readers a
month, depending on how you try to count them.

pg used to post graphs sometimes using an old Google API where you could
supply all the data points in a URL and it would return an image. Edit: like
[http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=ls&chco=ff7700,000000...](http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=ls&chco=ff7700,000000,ff0000,008800,444499&chs=680x300&chd=t:48,46,44,45,45,46,44,44,48,55,61,65,69,75,74,74,73,76,75,75,72,74,73,68,65,62,60,58,56,55,53,53,55,48,48,48,46,46,43,45,38,41,44,42,41,40,42,45,47,50,52,52,53,53,54,55,52,50,52,55,54,54,47,48,50,47,49,55,49,48,49,49,46,47,47,47,46,44,43,43,38,38,43,46,56,59,62,65,64,62,66,68,65,66,63,59,59,55,61,62,60,59,59,62,56,54,53,54,49,47,48,44,47,41,42,45,54,57,62,65,69,73,78,76,76,80,81,80,78,77,76,73,71,69,64,61,60|18,20,23,18,22,25,19,25,25,23,24,22,24,27,30,28,28,31,29,27,29,30,27,27,25,27,26,27,25,27,27,27,23,23,24,23,24,25,25,25,23,24,21,26,24,24,24,24,25,26,26,27,26,26,26,30,28,26,26,26,28,28,33,27,27,24,26,27,28,28,25,27,27,28,28,32,24,26,25,24,26,25,28,25,26,27,25,27,27,32,30,32,31,27,28,26,28,31,27,33,30,30,30,30,25,28,28,29,27,32,29,29,27,28,25,30,29,29,27,31,30,31,30,35,34,34,34,38,33,32,35,31,31,29,30,34,34|19,22,23,24,25,25,26,26,26,27,27,27,27,28,28,28,28,29,29,29,29,30,30,30,31,31,31,31,31,31,31,31,32,32,32,32,32,32,32,32,32,32,32,32,32,33,33,33,33,33,33,33,33,33,33,33,33,33,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,34,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,35,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,36,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37,37|14,15,14,1,1,2,18,1,1,16,15,1,1,16,1,15,0,15,15,14,13,1,15,0,14,16,17,16,17,0,16,17,15,16,18,16,16,0,23,17,0,2,16,16,16,16,15,16,15,15,16,20,15,15,15,17,16,16,16,15,14,19,0,16,13,23,15,14,1,15,14,1,15,13,14,14,18,13,1,15,0,13,14,14,14,39,20,25,14,1,14,18,1,14,0,14,13,12,13,13,12,12,12,1,20,15,13,13,13,13,16,14,0,14,13,0,13,0,15,2,14,14,1,17,0,13,14,14,24,40,13,13,13,15,14,16,14|4,5,5,4,4,5,9,5,3,10,14,4,6,2,4,5,5,3,3,3,279,2,4,7,24,3,2,6,2,5,4,5,4,2,3,2,3,5,15,2,4,3,5,3,9,17,16,5,2,3,4,4,2,3,141,3,36,3,3,5,9,2,3,2,3,3,7,4,3,5,4,4,7,6,6,5,6,3,11,3,7,3,6,2,5,3,4,4,2,5,3,3,3,4,4,2,3,4,5,42,4,6,7,6,59,3,3,4,3,6,4,3,3,6,25,4,3,4,26,9,26,84,5,5,9,5,3,5,18,3,5,43,8),
which still works! via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1833276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1833276)

~~~
ksec
5M Uniques! 5.5M Daily Views.... This is much much bigger than I imagine.

~~~
ksec
I sat down and was thinking about these numbers.

Most of the post I could find that share their Data with blog post hitting
front page of HN suggest they got less than 100K PV. They do get over 100K
aggregate over a few days.

100K Vs 5M. This mildly suggest HN has a very high engagement from its users.

~~~
dang
The numbers I mentioned are an undercount because they don't include all the
apps and sites that consume HN through the API. When the new API we're working
on is released, it will eventually all be in-house and then we'll know. I
suspect the numbers will jump quite a bit.

------
DevKoala
TIL: That PG agrees that the source for Twitter’s toxicity is the pursue of
engagement at all costs. Those recommendation algorithms that surface content
that triggers people’s emotions and spur divisiveness are clearly one of the
main reasons why citizens in the USA are at war among themselves.

~~~
nojvek
THIS ^

It’s hard for us to believe our fancy AI algorithms that optimize for ad
clicks have this massive side effects of actually manipulating what is
perceived as reality and affecting their emotions.

They surface more enraging news and create echo chambers where anyone who
doesn’t think like them are the enemy.

------
rsecora
Every forum risk having an Eternal September.

Eternal September is a period beginning in September 1993, the month that
America Online (AOL) began offering Usenet access to its many users.

Before then, Usenet was largely restricted to colleges, universities, and
other research institutions. Every September, many incoming students would
acquire access to Usenet for the first time, taking time to become accustomed
to Usenet's standards of conduct and "netiquette". After a month or so, these
new users would either learn to comply with the networks' social norms or tire
of using the service.

The influx of new users from AOL did not end and Usenet's existing culture did
not have the capacity to integrate the sheer number of new users.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)

~~~
Balgair
Can't we leverage this lesson then? If smaller groups can be integrated into
the larger one with enough time, then the answer is straightforward. You can
have very large internet forums, but new users need to be slowly integrated
into the 'culture' piecemeal.

Create a good culture, then break it out and parallelize it. New users get
slotted into larger groups to learn the culture, then they can be sent on
their way into the larger culture.

Twitter Training Wheels?

~~~
nabilhat
Metafilter has been successful, I believe primarily due to the $5 charge to
create a posting account and the warmup period of limitations for new
accounts. New accounts trickle in at a manageable level. All account owners
get that sense of ownership and care that comes with exchanging currency for
something. Most internet brigading can't scale a small expense to begin with,
and existing account owners who might otherwise get bootstrapped into a
brigade don't want to get kicked out for being a jerk.

~~~
Master_Odin
SomethingAwful has a similar requirement on spending money for an account, but
that's not stopped people from doing dumb things to get muted or banned,
keeping the moderators quite busy.

~~~
Hello71
at least the expense can be used to fund additional moderation.

see: facebook, twitter et al complaining about moderation being too hard at
scale

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> dominic @casiotone · 13h >> unless his job is "maintaining a worryingly
high level of white supremacist comments" no he does not

I remember, when I was in high school, I read a book about arithmomancy, an
occult practice that basically consists of adding up, dividing etc numbers
until you get to a result that has some esoteric significance.

For example, if you divide 300, the number of the Spartans in Thermopylae, by
100, the number of years in a century, you find 3, 3 is the number of the holy
trinity, therefore the sacrifice of the Spartans at Thermopylae heralds the
Lamb of God, who sacrificed himself to bring on the glory of the Trinity in a
new aeon of the human spirit. Something along those lines- you basically do
some base arithmetic and jump around meanings and symbols like a little frog
from lillipad to lillipad.

Anyway, after I read that book, I started experimenting with my date of birth,
specifically the day of the month, let's say it was made from the digits in
XY. After spending a whole week obsessively (but how else) deriving all sorts
of deeply meaningful, mystical insights about the relation of XY to the month
and year of my birth, the births of my parents, my friends, Jesus Christ, Olaf
Palme and Gina Lolobrigita, of all people, I started seeing "XY" e v e r y w h
e r e. Like, I'd go to the loo and my eyes would idly scan the surroundings
and find the two digits, XY, on the back of a shampoo bottle, or I'd see them
aaalmost forming in the foam at the bottom of the bathtub, or the steam on the
mirror, or wherever really. It took me a while to get over it. XY everywhere!

What does this tell us? That if you look for something hard enough, you will
notice it to the exclusion of every other detail around it, even if every
other detail appears with the same frequencey as that one thing you're seeing
- and you're seeing it because your entire mind is actively _looking for it_.

Aye, you got it: confirmation bias.

So with "white supermacist" (or sexist, classist, genderist, whateverist)
comments on HN. There's always someone who thinks HN leans one way in whatever
polarised debate. Then there's always someone else who thinks it leans the
other way. Because HN doesn't lean either way. It's just, people come on here
wanting to find a certain opinion that they absolutely want to do battle with.
So they lower their visor and through its cross-shaped slit they see what they
want to see. And notice nothing else.

So, "HN is white supremacist". Honestly.

~~~
DanBC
You've written a lot of words which fail to address anything in real life:
there are plenty of openly racist, misogynistic comments on HN that don't get
flagged, they don't get downvotes, and often get upvotes.

People aren't making this up.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
And there are plenty more of openly racist, misogynistic comments on HN that
get flagged to death. Plus, the accounts that post only such comments get
shadowbanned and their throwaways get shadobanned. Then those that get their
comments treated liek that complain that their freedom of speech is impinged
upon or whatever and they post comments that they preface with "let the
downvotes begin" and they get downvoted not because of what they say, that
nobody reads, but because of the preface, that everybody knows is a sign of an
unworthy comment.

Clearly, some escape. There's one moderator and a community of users who can't
always be vigilant or always have time to read through every polarised screed
at the bottom of a ten-comment thread. So yeah, some stuff that should really
be buried, stays in the open.

So, what?

------
peapicker
Loved the comment On the tweet from Rob ‘CmdrTaco’ Malda

~~~
romanows
"I coulda told you THAT man. It’s a nightmare!"\-- Rob ‘CmdrTaco’ Malda

------
papandada
Give it up for dang, props from Calgary

------
davidgerard
I understand that HN postings and comments used to form part of the assessment
process for prospective YC candidates. Is that still the case?

~~~
dang
Not really. Actually, it didn't ever really. pg would sometimes recognize a
username and that was about it.

~~~
davidgerard
Looks like Sam Altman says otherwise:
[https://ytpak.net/watch?v=kVKaMHgOTP4](https://ytpak.net/watch?v=kVKaMHgOTP4)

"The way we recruit the best people in the world is by reaching them via
multiple channels. So the alumni work is really important, hacker news is
really important, putting great content online is really important"

pretty sure this isn't what I was thinking of, so still looking

------
every
Metafilter[0], via moderators, has done a nice job for several decades. But
definitely less technical and more social than HN...

[0]: [https://www.metafilter.com/](https://www.metafilter.com/)

------
goto11
The highest quality forum I know is AskHistorians on reddit. The content is
amazing and it even seems to be getting better over time. They have very
_very_ strict moderation and the forum is notorious for how many posts are
getting deleted by moderators (including all complaints about the strict
moderation). But it works.

------
ScottFree
That reminds me of this webcomic from 2001.

"Only once you can successfully wrestle a herd of monkeys will you truly be
ready to manage your forum."

[https://megatokyo.com/strip/209](https://megatokyo.com/strip/209)

------
KKKKkkkk1
I'm curious what was the motivation for keeping HN going. It doesn't seem like
a large capital sink, but apparently has extremely high costs otherwise. Paul
is a man who is very smart about allocating resources and effort. Why HN?

------
nabaraz
Are we at a point where dividing HN into smaller communities is beneficial? I
know there are Show HN, Ask HN, Who is Hiring, etc? I want to see a section
for DIY/personal projects and maybe even AMAs.

~~~
ciarannolan
I hope not. I like HN just the way it is. It's a simple text message board
with good moderation.

We don't need to pile on more features for the sake of it. There are plenty of
communities for DIY projects and AMAs.

~~~
gus_massa
I really like the plain structure, but I also noted that sometimes it is
difficult for the small projects to reach the front page. Please remember to
go to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newest](https://news.ycombinator.com/newest) and
upvote _interesting_ small projects.

~~~
dang
And
[https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew](https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew),
which is much less well known. It's linked from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/show](https://news.ycombinator.com/show) at the
top.

~~~
nabaraz
This is great. Is there a new for Ask HN and Tell HN as well?

~~~
dang
Nope, it's on the list to add that. Ask and Tell are the same though, so this
would just be /asknew.

------
forgingahead
"Don't run a forum" \- this seems like bad advice.

"Don't run a forum similar with reddit-style popularity rankings" might be a
better description.

Running a forum is part of managing a community, where ideas, advice and other
positive things can be exchanged. If you're a startup, a community can help
seed your initial userbase and give you valuable feedback to see if you're
providing value to a group of people.

That doesn't mean there aren't stressors, but I disagree with the blanket
"don't do it, it's scary".

~~~
xsmasher
Nextdoor doesn't run on popularity ranking but still goes toxic on a regular
basis.

------
bane
It's hard to state how invaluable HN is to me personally, and likely to the
Internet as well. It's hard to say if the stress was worth it, but it created
something _really_ special.

------
anonmidniteshpr
@dang must smoke some really good herb to stay sane.

So by "stress" does PG mean blood pressure rise, sweaty palms, urge to jog
around the block twice, sleepless nights, or waking flashbacks? hmmm

------
sneak
What part about running HN stressed him out?

~~~
MattGaiser
I’m a Facebook group moderator. The stressful part is figuring out how to be
fair with everyone screaming at you that you are biased.

------
intended
These threads always are filled with first stab approaches and few people
bringing up research or actual information about the problem.

Social media discussions are near the blind spot for HN folk.

------
kiddico
Sorry if I've been slow, but is the hn user "dang" "Daniel Gackle"?

I never connected it to an irl name, I just figured it was an early grab at a
fun username.

~~~
detaro
yes. And he seems to enjoy the double meanings of the username

------
mraza007
I love hacker news and attained a lot of knowledge from this. I’m just curious
how much traffic does HN gets

~~~
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23808787](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23808787)

~~~
mraza007
Thanks for sharing this. I love how hackernews has grown organically

------
6510
Thanks Paul, its been great.

------
moonchild
> @theshawwn: [dang] has had a habit of silencing some long-standing members
> of HN: yummyfajitas, mtgx, myself – for what seem to be inconsistent
> reasons. He also applies penalties that last for years, and people are too
> afraid to say anything. I feel bad saying this, but when Dan retires, I'll
> feel relieved. It's hard to overstate just how authoritarian he is,
> underneath that disarming personality. He reads every comment. You can't say
> anything without speaking to Dan, indirectly.

Can some explain/clarify?

~~~
DanBC
(I have no connection to the mods, all of this is just me guessing.)

People who behave poorly, especially if it's something they've done for a long
time, can dislike being held to account for that. dang has a range of tools
available, and these get used to hold people to account for their destructive
behaviours. These people get increasing levels of warnings before they
eventually get banned.

And then, when they've been banned, they see some other account that posts
similar content that hasn't been banned and they say "inconsistent!". What
they've missed is the "yet" part of "hasn't been banned yet" \-- that other
account may be banned in future, or if they drop the destructive behaviour
they may have all the measures removed.

> He also applies penalties that last for years, and people are too afraid to
> say anything.

I don't know what dang's email account is like but I'm guessing it's full of
people who are not too afraid to say anything.

~~~
luckylion
> What they've missed is the "yet" part of "hasn't been banned yet" \-- that
> other account may be banned in future, or if they drop the destructive
> behaviour they may have all the measures removed.

That's a problem though. If you let some murderers roam free and when somebody
says "you arrested me when I murdered somebody, why aren't you arresting
them", you say "hey, you don't know that we don't arrest them, we're just
haven't arrested them _yet_. Please wait 100 years to see whether we really
don't arrest them".

I don't know what the original comment was about etc, but "maybe it'll
eventually be consistent" isn't a good answer to claims of inconsistency.
Maybe it will, but it probably won't. If behavior is treated differently, the
best prediction is that it will continue to be treated differently.

~~~
zzzcpan
The original comment is about dang jumpyness and unfairness in moderation. He
won't touch some people for the things he will shadowban or downweight others.
Whatever you can praise dang for, moderation isn't one of those things. On HN
there are effectively no rules and no objectivity, only what moderators say
goes.

------
29athrowaway
Does dang sleep?

------
unityByFreedom
"Don't start a forum" says the guy who helped found two of the most successful
ones. Two things can be true here,

1) Running HN stressed out PG

2) Discouraging forum competitors significantly helps YC.

Per YC etiquette, please explain your downvotes.

~~~
nojvek
I don’t think pg is discouraging others from starting a forum. He’s merely
saying running a forum has a lot more stress in moderating it than building
the technology.

But it could be that dang enjoys what pg found stressful.

I was part of running a community website but I absolutely hated running the
admin side of it. I just wanted to build pretty UI and make things work. I
absolutely loathed responding to support emails. It drained me out. A non
technical friend of ours loved the admin and people side. He would onboard
users, write nice how to articles for others, resolve conflicts, respond to
suooort emails. He did not care one bit about how it all worked, just that it
worked and he could help others get value out of the site.

Some people are good at building things, Some people are great at fostering
built things.

~~~
unityByFreedom
> I don’t think pg is discouraging others from starting a forum.

He literally wrote "Don't start a forum". Yet, solutions to current problems
with social media may be limited by the fact that only a few companies manage
the content. PG is not motivated to innovate on social media tools as a
builder or an investor.

We need better forums with better moderation tools that enable more users to
participate in moderation. It is possible to do within existing forums or a
new one, so I would encourage innovation on this rather than discourage it.
There are a hundred ways you could empower better communities using things
like annotator agreement or automated appeals.

------
bzb3
We love you dang.

------
switch11
Perhaps something people are leaving out ENTIRELY

1) It's not the Social Network is toxic

OR

Chasing engagement is toxic

2) Perhaps the TRUTH is that people themselves are FLAWED DEEPLY

 __ __ __ __ __ __

what does Political Correctness and Wishful Thinking say

That you bring people together and they will solve big problems There will be
world peace Everyone will learn to love each other

What is reality telling us

That whenever you bring people together their TRUE NATURE as Animals in a
fight for Survival of the Fittest will come out

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

Try any forum Try any online group Try any social network

What do you see People showing the worst aspect of themselves

If 95% of the time people are doing bad things

Then why are we assuming that it is something to do with the TOOLS

Why doesn't someone state the obvious

People are animals Bring them together and they have herd mentality and do
terrible things

------
sgustard
I started an internet forum in 2006 whose audience was almost entirely female.
It grew to a reasonable size, not huge, but what was remarkable was a nearly
complete lack of trolls, arguments, and bad behavior. We saw that women just
engage differently online, with a premium on expressing positive sentiments
and encouraging each other to contribute constructively. Of course I don't
want to generalize, but the removal of young men at their testosterone peak
age from anonymous forums is remarkable.

~~~
Nextgrid
I think that women can also be very toxic when given the right incentives.

I saw certain MLM groups where _women_ (and exclusively women, since these
MLMs didn't cater to men) would say pretty nasty and offensive things to push
their agenda and using the same idea of positivity, encouragement and "female
empowerment" and any naysayer will get shut down supposedly because they are
being negative or not supportive (completely overlooking the fact that they're
hawking a scam).

I am not sure whether women need an external trigger for this (such as the MLM
in this example) whether as men tend to do it by themselves, or if you simply
got lucky and happened to be surrounded by good people, especially in that
early era when computers, internet access (for non-work purposes) and social
networking was still relatively niche and acted as a filter compared to
nowadays where every idiot has access to all those things.

~~~
silveroriole
Good point on the nastiness in the name of positivity. See the askwomen sub on
reddit. On some threads EVERY comment is deleted and the topic is closed
because people supposedly weren’t being positive/inclusive/whatever enough.
Really, every single person?! The moderation is off the rails and it creates
an atmosphere of paranoia.

~~~
tim333
Also most of cancel culture fits in the nastiness in the name of positivity
category.

------
mtgp1000
As someone who occasionally has run-ins with mods, I have to remark that
moderation as of late has been quite welcoming to "dissenting" opinion,
exceptionally so given current events.

Thank you, dang, you have shepherded a glimmering institution among a sea of
rough.

------
mitchtbaum
[https://youtu.be/vN7HQrgakZU](https://youtu.be/vN7HQrgakZU)

Letting the days go by, water flowing underground

------
pmiller2
Well, that sure is the most "first world problem," tone deaf thing I've heard
all day.

~~~
greesil
"third world" countries don't have forums on the internet?

~~~
cambalache
We do, we just dont lose any sleep about them, you americans take social media
way too seriously

~~~
surfpel
The effects it’s had are far reaching. The Arab spring, right wing extremism,
anti vaxxers, the rise of Bernie Sanders just off the top of my head. Seems
quite serious to me

------
FilterSweep
Are we sure the civil war isn’t being caused by sychophants like PG himself
cozying up to the alt-right while maintaining considerable power over online
discourse?

Maybe these are the """hard questions"""[0] that need to be asked, as opposed
to calling for a return to the Jim Crow era.

You could easily "turn off" Twitter.

[0] [http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

~~~
kgraves
> ...PG himself cozying up to the alt-right?

Do you have evidence for this statement?

~~~
FilterSweep
Here: [http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

And here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18426853](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18426853)

And here: [https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474708/does-this-
mega...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474708/does-this-mega-vc-
sound-racist-.html)

Perhaps if the queen of Hacker News chose to be clear about his beliefs his
minions wouldn’t need to scurry to claim "he doesn’t actually believe this"

~~~
reversii
It's unfortunate you're getting censored for criticizing Dear Leader.

Yet another reminder of just how creepy the cult of personality HN has around
Paul Graham is. Even on an article discussing him, you can't say anything
critical without being downvoted and flagged.

~~~
clairity
you certainly can criticize pg's _arguments_ and not get downvoted (i've done
it in the past), but any _ad hominems_ will, and should, quickly be downvoted.

if you think you have some real knowledge to drop, make a considered criticism
instead of a snide remark.

