It's just a cool place to visit now an then an check cool stuff out.
You don’t see it as much these days, but YC portfolio companies can post privileged threads on this site for job listings, which in practice double as ads for the company. You’re not allowed to comment on them.
I haven’t seen one for a while because I suspect every company is already inundated with 1000 applications for every job in this market, but this is what Hacker News was for.
Y Combinator is right there in the URL. People know and don't care because it's a well run forum with interesting discussions, the privileged posts don't change that.
Most people aren't so slavishly devoted to capital that they have memorized the names of firms.
But, it is social media. Just that they make a point to try and tone it down and keep it focused.
People definitely became internet junkies in the past. IRC was where you could find chronically online people before that term was popular.
The good old IRC quote databases were full of jokes about people not leaving their house and being online all the time. I remember being mocked in IRC rooms because I was out doing things instead of being on IRC all weekend. IRC was the place for the chronically online. This has always been a thing and it’s weird to see it dismissed so casually.
I think the spectrum runs from social media, to forum, to news feed… maybe other things. HN isn’t toxic.
It doesn't intentionally insert dark patterns into the platform.
It's not without flaws, of course, but it's 1+ orders of magnitude better than anything else.
a) real pseudonymity b) no photos/videos c) no infinite scroll d) no notifications e) very specific (mildly speaking) topic range f) very very good ranking and filtering algo ....
I should have done it long before, quitting has been so massively beneficial and I don’t feel I’m missing anything. All real social interaction online these days is in messaging apps. Social media is just a feed of endless slop designed to put you in a zombie like state of scrolling.