Yes, and it is addicting as any of the others. I quit Twitter and Bluesky a while ago, locked myself out of my Reddit account, but HN is one of the hardest that I found to rid of.
To me there were two ways of using social media: #1 interacting with people I know about things in my life and #2 interacting with third-party content and then people I don't really know.
To me Facebook, Instagram and Twitter went completely downhill when it became about #2 for me and my social circle. Twitter was the first, followed by Facebook and then Instagram. I just deleted them in that order. To me they became divisive, angry, political, it made following certain friends impossible, it made people addicted to it, it generated influencers, it made certain friends behave strangely IRL (communicating via meme language only).
HN is definitely #2, but way less political due to moderation.
I like the fact that there's less politics - I know that many people might call it censorship or something, but I feel like it does do somewhat to reduce doomscrolling, as it is one of the topics that people are deeply invested about. Still, there's that mix of "A Modest Proposal" style faux-intellectualism (low-effort social conservatism, kneejerk reactions to technology, toxic startup grindset positivity), that I still tend to get sniped by.
For interacting with the people I know, I try to collect Signal/Discord contacts for those who I find valuable enough to talk at a future point, with the end goal of moving all contacts I know to Mikoto Platforms (a messaging platform that I am building).
celticninja|3 months ago
It isn't even close. Digg.com used to have it and so did reddit, but it degraded so much that they became unuseable.
chasing0entropy|3 months ago
whstl|3 months ago
To me Facebook, Instagram and Twitter went completely downhill when it became about #2 for me and my social circle. Twitter was the first, followed by Facebook and then Instagram. I just deleted them in that order. To me they became divisive, angry, political, it made following certain friends impossible, it made people addicted to it, it generated influencers, it made certain friends behave strangely IRL (communicating via meme language only).
HN is definitely #2, but way less political due to moderation.
CactusBlue|3 months ago
For interacting with the people I know, I try to collect Signal/Discord contacts for those who I find valuable enough to talk at a future point, with the end goal of moving all contacts I know to Mikoto Platforms (a messaging platform that I am building).
patanegra|3 months ago
You could have HN for politics, or art and philosophy.
Chilko|3 months ago