Comment by macintux
2 days ago
And HN doesn't choose to show you targeted, inflammatory content based on your history. That's a huge difference from Facebook.
2 days ago
And HN doesn't choose to show you targeted, inflammatory content based on your history. That's a huge difference from Facebook.
Most people on HN who advocate regulating social media don't only want to prevent those platforms from showing targeted inflammatory content, they want to make all algorithmic feeds other than strictly chronological illegal, as well as moderation of any legal content.
From that point of view, Hacker News is little different than Facebook. One could even argue that HN's karma system is a dark pattern designed to breed addiction and influence conversation in much the same way as other social media platforms, albeit not to the same degree.
At least HN karma is incremental and based on something approximating merit as opposed to being a slot machine where you never know which comment will earn Karma. More effort or rare insight, generally yields more karma.
That hasn't been my experience. How much karma you get is heavily dependant on how many people see the comment. The most insightful effort-filled comment at the bottom of a 4 day old thread isn't going to get you nearly as much, if anything, compared to a joke with just the right amount of snark at the top of a post currently at the top of the front page.
That doesn't make it any less addictive or manipulative.
I would be astonished if a majority of people opposed to social media algorithms consider HN's approach to be sufficiently objectionable to be regulated or in any way similar to Facebook.
Hacker News doesn't use a strictly chronological feed. Hacker News manipulates the feed to promote certain items over others. Hacker News moderates legal content. Those are all features of social media algorithms that people are opposed to. It just isn't "objectionable" when HN does it.
And regulations of this kind always creep out of scope. We've seen it happen countless times. But people hate social media so much around here that they simply don't think it through, or else don't care.
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