Comment by chainsaw10

My feelings are mixed on this.

On FB, I'm usually glad that links open in a new tab (well, I middle click them anyway, but sometimes I forget) because if they didn't, I'd have the huge problem of trying to infinite scroll my way back to where I was.

On just some random business website, OTOH, I usually take it to mean the business owner (or developer) thought their site was so important, it should make me keep it open while I go to another link.

I usually middle-click on HN anyway, but I feel like it's sort of nicer in a way, to be in control of that. Maybe HN feels like more of a page than an application to me because it doesn't use infinite scroll / a ton of custom Javascript behavior?

I'm inclined to agree that web _applications_ should open external links in a new tab, but I'm not sure it's best for HN.