Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

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Well, the good news is that you guys aren't losing out on it!

You're on HN. Which means you get your daily dose of "outrage porn" like anyone else. I think many people don't think of HN as, basically, a "News" site. With a large percentage of the front page dedicated to "outrage porn". "Big Tech Helping China." "US Workers Highly Taxed." Etc etc etc. And those are just the more, kind of, moderate examples. I think yesterday's: "San Francisco's Slow Motion Suicide" was an example that went a bit further. And there have been discussions on here that just tend to devolve into extremism relatively quickly. (I guess the San Fran post from yesterday devolved into extremism relatively quickly as well. But I suppose I'm talking about discussions that tend to devolve right away.)

At any rate, yeah, if we're on HN, we can't realistically claim to have sworn off news, or "outrage porn". We're just, kind of, comfortable with the "outrage porn" that we get from Hacker News. So much so that some of us, apparently, don't even recognize it as news, or "outrage porn".

Exactly. I've seen many ridiculous stories, nonsense etc on HN which existed purely to fuel outrage among the more tech-oriented crowd.

Ultimately when people say they've dropped out of a specific news bubble: that means they've just started ignoring things that don't personally affect them or they don't care about. It's essentially as another commentator said meant that you're in favor of the status quo, which means you shouldn't be surprised if you encounter someone who is negatively affected by the status quo and calls you out on being OK with it.

I don't read the articles on HN. Just here because I often learn about new things (not news) from the discussion.

You never read any articles on HN? Maybe you shouldn't be commenting if you've literally never read a single one?

Doesn't mean parent isn't aware of the topic or hasn't heard about it from somewhere else.

Man, things have changed. I used to be on Slashdot, where it was a badge of honor if you didn't RTFA (read the fine article).

This is a good point. However, I think the major difference is the proportion of the content that is "outrage porn". I would argue that HN has a notably lower proportion.

Just took a look at my main "Go to", the BBC.

It's difficult to tell, because the front page of BBC has so many more articles on it than the front page of HN, but the "outrage porn" proportion seems about equal to me. Right around 1/4 or 1/5 of the articles I would classify that way. Seems about the same as HN.

Just for context, at the moment on HN, I'd say these are the "news"-y and "outrage porn"-y posts on the front page.

"Amazon Workers Are Listening To What You Tell Alexa" - Obligatory "outrage porn" post for FAANG company. (Generally a minimum of one is always present on the front page.)

"Urgent Quest For Slower, Better News"

"Most Prestigious Journals Publishing Least Reliable Science"

"New Human Species Found In Philippines" - (Predictable descent into extreme views on evolution. No more "Out of Africa", all that "scientific evidence" stuff is nonsense.)

"Startup Stock Options - Good Deal Gone Bad"

"Logic of Political Survival"

And that doesn't even count the posts on the front page that are borderline.

For starters, I think you're being extremely cynical.

Second, unlike other news sources, HN tends to have moderate to high quality discussion. I come to HN because I tend to learn things and grow here. That's not to say that it's perfect of course, but I think you're being more than a bit dishonest when you compare HN to mainstream media news.

>> compare HN to mainstream media news

HN is a aggregator of (mainstream) media news. It is in a position where it should be able to achieve a better ratio between clickbait and non-clickbait than others. Parent suggested it doesn't. I agree. Huston, we have a problem.

Am I outraged over the fact? Not at all. Because I do not expect HN to be better than mainstream. And in fact it isn't. HN is just a different pie.

"If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

It's not supposed to be an aggregator of mainstream news. Unfortunatley, it has become that.

> Second, unlike other news sources, HN tends to have moderate to high quality discussion.

I firmly oppose to this view. What you are perceiving as "moderate to high quality" is actually just the suppression of mean words, that is good by itself but does not equate to the quality.

I too classify about one fifth of the HN front page as "outrage porns"; they tend to be visibly biased and their discussions are significantly worse in my humble opinion. For that portion of HN I believe they are no better than the mainstream media. If you want remaining four fifths, good! But you have to learn to filter the problematic fifth out.

I think most of the political discussions on HN have a clear side that the commenters take. To disagree with the consensus invites down-votes into oblivion, so almost no one disagrees with the consensus.

Still, HN is an order of magnitude more thoughtful than the clowns at Fox/CNN/etc news. Just the fact that it is mostly text is one factor.

How would you define outrage porn? I think that we have to be careful with definitions. Just as we do not define everything that produces sexual arousal as porn because we would have to call even meaningful relationships porn, we should be careful not to call everything that might produce a certain level of disagreement "outrage porn". If there is a well reasoned and substantiated article about something that is bad and should be fixed, what is your metric to distinguish it from outrage porn?

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