Thread: being disappointed in Hacker News & my tech news diet

The tech world is an everchanging field. To have a job as a software developer means that you need to keep yourself informed about new tools, frameworks. Thus, finding a good website for tech news is important. It has now been over three years that I have been using Hacker News for this purpose. I have to say that I was informed of most of the important stuff. (1/6)

Over the past year however, I have been limiting my use of HN because the mentality and discussion over there has been somewhat reactionary and overtly hostile. Doesn't matter what it's about, people are going to be angry. There was a submission about the positive user base growth of Spotify and people managed to get angry about some tangentially Spotify-related anecdotes. IMO, reading rants over and over again is detrimental to my mood, and it was the leading reason why I left Twitter. (2/6)

What's more, once HN approaches anything remotely touching politics, you can tell that this is a website that was created by US libertarians. I really cannot stand the amount of people that are defending the "free market" when it is completely failing customers, defending "free speech" for nazis, applauding disrupting startups that add little value for people at large, legitimizing imperialism/neo-colonialism, etc. (3/6)

And discussion pertaining to politics happens way more often than they would like to admit given the growing use of tech in the context of surveillance or civil rights for instance. However I was telling myself that I needed to try and ignore rants and politics, because if I didn't I'd have no way to stay in the loop. This week, I have realized that most commenters seem to have very poor knowledge of the tech they are commenting. And this is the last straw. (4/6)

I'm done with HN because I have realized that submissions are done by the same people that comment. Their views are fundamentally neoliberal. So when it comes to tech, they ignore incredible stuff like Peertube because they don't see the way that it could make money for instance. They don't talk about the issues facing LGBTQ people, POC, etc. You can say that differing views made me go away, and that's fine, it's true. I don't support views that (IMO) contribute to our world's slow burn. (5/6)