Took me another read, but I think the assertion is that a strong characteristic of twitter alternatives is that they talk about twitter a great deal. And so that's a common thread between twitter alternatives and HN.
It's in the rules for HN that it's a passive (not passive aggressive) variant of fight club: we don't talk about HN because .. it's boring to get meta about HN.
ggm|2 years ago
dirtyhippiefree|2 years ago
“But it’s technology!”
“But we don’t discuss HN publicly.”