Going back two years on Hacker News is like entering another, better universe

EmX_3000

Almost everything in the new submissions is about AI and has been for a while now. Same with the links you see. It's getting to the point where non-AI tech news and information is completely drowned out. Stepping back month by month you can see how the AI content increases exponentially. Soon it'll be all you can read about it unless something is done. Perhaps a yc.ai site for AI-related news and discussion?

vhiremath4

From most people I talk to, there is an understanding that the overwhelm of AI content, bot comments, etc. has degraded the quality of community spaces (especially HN but also including Reddit, X/Twitter, etc.). I hope we can figure out a way to get more human-curated content soon and make the economics of amplifying it make sense (obviously it does not in this current transition chapter).

swingandamiss

Yes. HN has slowly turned into the reasons I left reddit. Every topic turning into politics, pure hate and outrage. Massive number of negative sentiment posts. I was going to reddit and leaving angry. Increasingly I'm coming to HN and leaving angry. I don't want that and if it doesn't change soon I'll have to stop coming here to.

jdlyga

It's the natural progression of websites like this. Reddit went through the same progression: it was very positive and felt like a community when the migration from Digg first happened. 10 years ago, Hacker News felt like an insider website for professionals. It still does, but there's definitely an uptick in negativity.

FranOntanaya

I feel it's noticeably better on weekends, when people aren't at work sending stories.

snarkyturtle

Agree that tech was more exciting when AI wasn't in the fold, but it's also true that the tech industry and SF in particular was facing headwinds economically. Without AI there even have been a recession. So the question is: is it fine for SF to rebound and money to spent on a revolutionary tech, at the expense of human ingenuity and possibly our entire industry?

t1234s

I'm tired of political/social manifestos as part of the README.md files in github repositories for packages have no choice but to use. I'm tired of command line package manager tools asking for Ukraine support from my command line.

rcarticulate

I don't know, the frontpage looks fine today? - Canada payment system - folding paper airplanes - Solar panels - Raspberry pi price increases - a bunch of show hns - how does malloc work There are more AI posts that's for sure, but it's also not that bad? It's also heavily affecting the livelihood of many people here (for better and often worse), so it's reasonable that it would be prevalent. There's always been grumpy engineers here, on stackoverflow, reddit, everywhere. Lots of grumpy engineers are also amazing engineers. There's newbies proud to show something, even though it's not really always that great, some people dunk, some people encourage etc. I still like it here.

dang

Is it really a different universe than going back one year: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2025-11-08 or, for that matter, one month? https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2026-10-08 Similar perceptions have been around since before Hacker News was even named Hacker News ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852 ).

stoatmagoats

I used to love reading the HN comments. When there was a new tool or technology being discussed there would almost certainly be someone who directly worked on it, if not the founder themselves, giving further insight and welcoming discussion. And when there was back and forth discussion, it was people clarifying their questions and answers, and sharing their expertise. Now it’s just Reddit-style comment sections of people picking at each other.

testfrequency

The day I saw HN being linked on mainstream blogs, such as MacRumors - I knew this community was reaching its breaking point on having good conversations again. HN used to be a nice escape for me to have some technical brain teasers, now I see so many hate comments it just makes me upset and no longer feel engaged anymore.

phyzome

Wow, no kidding. It's almost entirely AI free. A lot more interesting.

0_____0

Relentless negativity drives away people who aren't relentlessly negative. I am dropping in this week after a while being away and my impression is that people got more distant and cynical while I was gone. I'm working on a solo project right now but I can't imagine posting about it here where people seem to want to only find reasons to tear builders down for not doing things their way.

tptacek

I'm a (vocal) proponent of AI (as applied to software development) and even I think, and have been saying all year, that the amount of AI stuff on the front page is unfortunate. It's not a mystery why anyone would think 2-years-ago HN was more fun than today's! But it's not an easy thing to intervene on. AI is neck and neck with "the Internet" for impact on technology.

xp84

I find it funny that the linked date features a story about the FDA proposing to maybe halt sales of the completely useless "drug" phenylephrine (Sudafed PE, etc). Here we are 2 years later and still zero action.

FLeXMurphy

Having been on the receiving end from both dang and tomhow as to how this discussion is "off topic", the "guidelines have been consistent for many years", and "if you have any concerns email us at hn@ycombi..." my genuine answer is: migrate to lobste.rs and the handful of other places. The moderation here has not been good even in light of all the praise they have gotten. This is not a "the ball was dropped yesterday" situation. The ball has been dropping for a long time now, and whenever someone brings it up, it's looked down upon. That's okay, we'll go and play in another sandbox then. I have a list of suggestions that would have a noticeable improvement on HN, and some of it has been implemented to success (and detriment) elsewhere. But that list is highly unlikely to even be attempted here, until it is too late and much like the Digg->Reddit situation, the barn doors have been left open for too long.

spullara

I love that the comments are exchanging ways to avoid the most important thing that has ever happened in computing.

bri3d

Eh? I think there was a brief timeframe of Too Much AI Related Crap, but the last few months, the front page feels better to me; HN is still one of my favorite news sources. The comments - I don't really see any kind of "Reddit"ification (the complaint so common it's in the rules!), but there is an annoying tendency towards baseless conspiracy theories lately that annoys me as a professional RE, especially since with LLMs reverse engineering is easier than ever before. Every story about a product release, a cell phone, or anything related to cryptography is loaded with "XYZ entity did this for ZYX comically evil reason," with absolutely no research, facts, or evidence in that direction. Hell, I think the top-voted comment on the "Claude found the nothing-up-our-sleeve randoms from ECDSA" was "it's still an NSA conspiracy!!!" HN has gone through several Genre Eras of "weird annoying" comments though (that I can remember, there was a suck-up-to-PG era, a "random NRX/Dark Enlightenment Crap" era, etc.), so I think the Everything Is A Corporate Conspiracy era is just our latest phase.

buellerbueller

Perhaps Big Tech/Silicon Valley has turned the corner from being a positive force in the lives of people, to being a negative entity in their lives?

dogscatstrees

Now that we can build (with Claude's help) sites like Karpathy's HackerTube, Hacker<add your focus here>, etc., what would be another interesting "Show HN:" type of analytics to build around the massive HN data, say focused on the zeitgeist of HN over time?