The light has gone out lately. I can't blame AI for all of it. there are a lot of AI stories, sure - but something else has changed. Even the show hn section doesn't sparkle anymore. That seem to be all libraries for doing complex stuff. Like everyone is pivoting to deliver more complex work in the face of vibe coding.
Where's the fun stuff? Where's the joy?
Those real needs won't go away. Until addressed.
What are they? Find out add address them.
It began several years ago. Now, this place is filled with a certain type of person...
There are many reasons for it but part of it is that the moderation team actively curtails all discussion of progressive or political topics even as the world tilts into chaos and strife due to technological issues that are relevant to this community and its parent company.
They claim it is in service of maintaining a conflict-free community and that they are "apolitical" but that is a deception, a straight up lie - censorship of speech is INTRINSICALLY political and the class whom it benefits the most is the class in power. That means the censorship policy here is literally authoritarianism in action. Just dressed up as innocent old "moderation policy". It's a lie. And anyone and everyone who has ever spoken out against Trump, Sam Altman, etc, on this site finds out very quickly that they are subject to thought policing. Either explicitly with moderation actions or implicitly with the threat of a ban -- or, more insidious, the shadow ban. Which the mods here are known to use. (You are silenced without knowing it.)
So, naturally, the only kind of personality who would condone or enjoy such authoritarian suppression of speech which benefits the rich and stifles all opposition to their will would be -- you guessed it -- people who are themselves uncritical authoritarians. The "top down authority" model makes sense to them.
These people may not recognize themselves by that label. Nevertheless it is a psychological type and it has to do with the structure of the parent-child relationship. It is still prevalent in America, especially in red states (though it isn't limited to red states -- other cohorts might be religious families, families of european descent, families with old money or strong patriarchal figures...) where the parent is the "boss" and the child must conform to what is expected.
Those people internalize a "whatever the boss says is right and who am I to fight it" attitude.
Those are the ones who are left behind when all the sensible adults recognize that the speech here is cooled, stifled, or outright silenced in service of the VC's who are actively burning the world to the ground.
It tends to cycle, just like many relationships. The flush of novelty is exciting; it contrasts positively with what's available elsewhere. Then you notice the annoying things, then the dismaying ones. Eventually that too becomes background, which other positive-again things can stand out from. At some point you realize it has all been there all along, if in fluctuating proportions.
It's affected by macro trends (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) and the swings going on in the world at large. It's affected by what's going on in a person's own life. Perhaps most of all, it's affected by the impact of the most recent things you happened to see that made an impression. There is a strong component of randomness in the latter.
People in an 'up' cycle with HN don't tend to make posts about it, so posts like this—through no fault of any one poster—are dominated by the 'down' cycle. There is a long tradition of these, going back about as far as HN itself. It produces a paradoxical "things have always been getting worse" sensation if you zoom back far enough.
It's there, you just have to look harder.
Like this story about Vecos, which fits your definition of "fun stuff", was posted earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49984984
There’s this post from a few weeks ago, if you just wanna filter out all the AI content
I know it's the nature of HN to be centered (nay, fixated) on the latest things, but I think I'm the wake of so much AI content, the people who would have otherwise done something else are doing AI things or posting elsewhere
As others have pointed out there are still fun things, but I feel like there are quantifiably fewer things that I enjoy on here, every week.
I used to love scrolling hn first thing in the morning and now I rarely do
We wanted to do things like this for ages but never had time. Justin at YC has been nailing it (I'm biased, of course) and a bunch of us have been enjoying nominating candidates for this treatment - a bit like HN's own second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), but through this different channel.
Anyone who wants to send a nomination, please do! hn@ycombinator.com is best.
Would you consider including a mastodon feed for this for those of us who don't habitually include the X formerly known as Twitter in our diet?
I don't understand mastoverse mechanics, so perhaps someone could suggest the most HN-friendly way to go about it?
dude250711•10h ago