[jgruber]

My thesis is that HN would like you to think their moderation is highly transparent, and it's very clear that the core HN audience believes that to be true, but that in fact it is not transparent at all.

If the problem is with my writing "being not that interesting or useful and also contentious", how then do you explain Daring Fireball ranking #3 here from 2007-2021 but dropping to #78 from 2021-2025. Do you think my writing was that much more interesting and useful (and less contentious?) for the first 14 years of HN but changed suddenly in 2021?

Or do you think HN's hidden admin moderation changed suddenly around 2021?

[ryandrake]

I think the overall conclusion from this investigation must be: We'll never know because at the end of the day it's HN's site, and they are the only ones who know how moderation works. They have the logs and (presumably) the materialized dashboards showing what's going on, and we only get a peek at it when the lead moderator (dang) pulls back the curtain a little. He is very friendly, and actually very, very prompt at responding to questions (both over E-mail, and in-thread) but I've always thought the responses about moderation activity are pretty opaque. Any time something that looks like shenanigans gets mentioned, it's always vaguely attributed to "user moderation" or "automated algorithms" such as the flamewar detection, with very few admissions of HN staff putting their thumbs on the scale (in either direction). Best case, if it's true that everything is due to user moderation, it would appear the site is pretty vulnerable to organized brigading (for or against specific topics).

So we'll never know for sure. Please keep writing. I visit here -and- have your site bookmarked because I appreciate the pro-Apple take on tech news, too.

EDIT: Aaaaaaand, in the time that I typed this comment, the article predictably went from normal to user-flagged.

[philipkd]

Maybe a dumb question, but how can you brigade against on Hacker News if there is no downvote of submissions?

[theshrike79]

When you get enough karma, you can "flag" submissions. If enough people flag a submission, it gets buried and won't show up on the front page anymore.

[philipkd]

And just to clarify, if enough people flag submissions, but not enough people, then it can get buried but not get the "flagged" tag? Because very few of the DF posts actually seem to get that tag.

But maybe even some light flagging, plus high engagement-to-view ratio (esp. if engagements go many levels deep fast), may cause some "unwanted" content to be buried.

[JohnBooty]

    And just to clarify, if enough people flag submissions, 
    but not enough people, then it can get buried but not get 
    the "flagged" tag?

As far as I know, this has not been definitively stated by the mods, but it seems very plausible.

As far as I'm concerned it's either that, or explicit moderation action to downweight links to DF and other selected domains.

[philipkd]

I'm a fan of both HN and DF. If I assume my worldview is accurate, that both are above-board, then the only explanation I have left is flamewar detection. Your links get too many comments—plus some flags sprinkled in there—too fast relative to upvotes. So, your posts get too much engagement.

There is a twisted logic to that algo, esp. for a "News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters"-flavored attitude, and esp. for a site that's trying to be as efficiently managed as possible.

Plus, Scott Alexander noted recently a decline in Substack due to deboosting on X, but also that just too many people are now Substacking, many of whom are good, and a lot who are just clones. And on the Dithering about "Rotten", you and Ben both concur that it feels like a while since either of you went viral. So as soon as a solo blogger blows up, the system quickly co-opts that blend of content into other media channels. i.e., Indie generally doesn't last.

I did a YoY look at your rankings:

2007: #50

2008: #20

2009: #3

2010: #1

2011: #2

2012: #7

2013: #34

2014: #17

2015: #568

2016: #184

2017: #8

2018: #69

2019: #86

2020: #8

2021: #20

2022: #406

2023: #98

2024: #133

2025: #53

(10/9/20XX – 10/09/20XX)

https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/?start=20...

Something weird definitely happened in 2015/2016, for sure (maybe the start of the anti-engagement algo). But your blog was also crazy popular between the iPhone's release and Steve Jobs' death. That was probably the most dynamic time in Apple's history (post-Sculley), with plenty of controversy worthy of exacting critique (Antennagate, etc.)

[jgruber]

This is fantastic, and I'm embarrassed I didn't think to do this year-by-year analysis myself. But then how do you square up the tepid response here to

https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/something_is_rotten_in_th...

[philipkd]

Yeah, I can only speculate on that one. It was a well-written, high-level epiphany, that, as you mentioned on the podcast, was purely editorial. It was one of my favorite DF posts, but I don't think everybody got it.