Comment by prophesi
6 days ago
> and increasingly, the demographics on HN don't align with those who work in those organizations.
People have been worried about that on HN for years, but I still see the same culture. There do seem to be more bots and astroturfing, but that's a systemic issue with all social media platforms today.
> People have been worried about that on HN for years, but I still see the same culture...
And that's the crux of the issue - the industry and people have changed, but HN hasn't changed discourse wise and is growing increasingly disconnected demographically speaking.
A large portion of HNers are men in their late 30s to 50s, and no longer located in the Bay Area or NYC.
No one's who matters is having these kinds of conversations on HN - they're meeting IRL with Luma invites or in signal/imessage/discord group chats.
And what I'm saying is that the people who actually matter are posting here. Because it's a trusted social platform. We want to talk to fellow experts of varied expertise, and I truly appreciate the discussions I have here. Feel free to have discussions of similar value on platforms with smaller, focused communities; I do the same for the tech I know. I do agree bots/astroturfing are prevalent here. But I've had https://news.ycombinator.com as my homepage for ages for a reason, as opposed to literally any other forum. I hope this doesn't become what reddit is now.
Did "hacker news" lose its stallman flavor in favor of venture capital investors? Yes, at the get-go; but that doesn't mean people have sold out their morals. We're all frustrated. We live in a society. At least in the US, you'll just call a representative who's getting paid by lobbyists letting your message fall on deaf ears. But I have seen so many great comments here by people with beautiful minds and good intentions; and sometimes I can even debate with them and get my ass handed to me, because they're much more brilliant than I.
edit: was curious on Luma. Is it basically meetup/radius/partiful/apple invites but for crypto bros?
> And what I'm saying is that the people who actually matter are posting here. Because it's a trusted social platform
I am one of the those people who matter and work with other people who do as well yet I'm the only one in my peer group of VCs, CISOs, CPOs, CTOs, CEOs, Founders, SWEs, PMs, etc who still uses HN today.
Hell, Nvidia GTC has been going on for 3 days now and not a single post about it has come up. That shows how out of the loop HN has become.
> Did "hacker news" lose its stallman flavor in favor of venture capital investors
To me, it's become even more Stallman-esque and less relevant to founders, operators, or investors. And this is a growing sentiment amongst newer YCombinator founders as well.
Conversations that are actually relevant to founders and VCs don't happen on HN anymore. And an increasing number of HNers use VC and PE interchangeably - this is such a basic mistake that betrays how out of the loop and lack of context HNers have now.
> was curious on Luma. Is it basically meetup/radius/partiful/apple invites but for crypto bros
It's the new meetup. If you are seeing crypto bros on there then you are not located in a major tech hub.
Opening up Luma this morning I see invites to a fireside chat with Fei-Fei Li (ImageNet), a spring showcase by a VC fund that has invested in dozens of YC startups, a couple raves, a Quantum Computing breakfast at Stanford sponsored by the Danish and Norwegian Consulates, and an event by the Japanese Consulate on the intersection of manga, AI, and creativity. These events and others are where people who matter and can impact change are hanging out and chatting with each other.
> I hope this doesn't become what reddit is now.
At least as an American in tech, HN already has become as low signal-to-noise as Reddit.
Based on the time you posted along with your pattern of speech, I'm guessing you live in Central or maybe Western Europe. You have a very "DACH" coded speech pattern.