Ask HN: Who reads the "newest" feed, and what do you look for there?

9•rand_num_gen•2h ago

Most people browse Hacker News through the front page (top / hot), since it's already filtered for quality by the community.

But the "newest" feed feels very different: it's raw, unfiltered, and often low-quality. Yet I notice some users clearly dig into it, upvote good posts, and bring hidden gems to the front page.

I'm curious: - Who here regularly reads the "newest" feed? - What kind of content are you looking for (early projects, research papers, niche blogs, etc.)? - Do you see yourselves as "content scouts" for the rest of the community, or just looking for things you personally enjoy? - How do you filter signal from noise?

I think this is an interesting part of HN culture that doesn't get discussed much.

Comments

PaulHoule•1h ago

This kind of thing. Particularly good “Ask HN”s fall through the cracks.

A few weeks back I was upvoting anything on the new page that wasn’t low quality posts about AI like “I vibe coded that almost works”, “Show HN: My me-too startup that’s just a Chat GPT” wrapper but that onslaught either stopped or I don’t care about it anymore.

MontgomeryPy•1h ago

I'm here. The Front Page doesn't seem to change much intraday (to me) and feels heavily moderated.

wryoak•1h ago

I almost exclusively read newest posts. I’ll check front page weekly or monthly but it updates so infrequently, the dialogue is saturated, and only highly popular (not necessarily high quality) things make it there. I prefer to act as my own filter.

comprev•1h ago

Opposite of this, I enjoy reading the HN discussions about the submissions which have risen to the top.

The vast knowledge in the collective HN community never fails to amaze me.

pwg•1h ago

> Yet I notice some users clearly dig into it, upvote good posts, and bring hidden gems to the front page.

That is how almost all of the front page items get to the front page to begin with.

> just looking for things you personally enjoy?

Mostly, plus the new feed has more variety (and more noise too) than the front page. So you'll find items you enjoy but that don't actually ever garner enough upvotes to make it to the front page.

shayway•11m ago

HN has great discussions but what shows up on the front page can be kinda samey. Newest has a lot more variety in topics.

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