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Ask HN: Is “Hacker News” becoming “News”?

4 points| cessor | 4 years ago

I value hacker news for the diverse range of articles that are posted every day. However, recently it feels like a lot of submissions go to the websites of major news outlets.

Is this really a representation what authentic users of some kind of hacker culture find interesting? Or is it that major news outlets have identified hacker news as a great place for targeted advertising of their articles?

I noticed because I recently encountered paywalled content; and more and more stuff is interesting, yet only peripherally related to technology and information.

How do you feel about this? Am I imagining things?

2 comments

dang|4 years ago

I don't know if you're imagining things but you might be overinterpreting the normal fluctuation of the site. People have been saying similar things about HN for 10+ years. Keep in mind that randomness always involves long sequences that feel anything but random. From my perspective, there's a more-or-less random mix of mainstream and obscure sources here.

Tomte|4 years ago

This is a variation of:

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html