[gpt5]

There is something awfully bad happening to the internet, including Hacker News.

It seems like rage-baiting, polarizing titles and vibe based comments are being upvoted, with no interest in the facts. For example, in this case:

1. The growth of the gold reserve in comparison to US Treasuries have very little to do with growth in gold acquisition, and has everything to do with gold more than doubling in price in a year.

2. To make it even worse, gold has since fluctuated in value, and treasuries overtook gold momentarily just a week ago. These price fluctuations has nothing to do with geopolitics.

3. Central bank buying of gold has been trending down in the last year, down 21% from 2024. So far in 2026 it's been going even lower.

4. Gold owned by central banks was higher than US treasuries in the 90s (this is mentioned in the article at least).

This is a little meta - but the thing that bothers me is that this low quality discussion like in this thread is spreading everywhere with the same mechanism - bring politics and polarization into every place, no matter how tangentially related it is.

[washadjeffmad]

Side stepping a little, but the Twitter and Reddit exoduses brought in a lot of people with established culture and communication dynamics at discrete periods. I considered writing an extension that collapses comments of accounts based on keywords and creation date, but ultimately decided that was regressive.

I think it's important to recognize how much the world has changed in a short period of time. HN was created when SV was unique, a large fraction of the globe was not on the internet, and web tech was new and novel. Everyone was still figuring out how to handle outreach and networking (I was positive it was a scam when the Omiyadar Network cold contacted me - "who does that?"). Today, I meet kids who made their first commits at the same age I was just trying to find friends in town who had computers. Now, our advanced is their common, and they're growing up primed for engagement-forward networking and self-promotion.

HN isn't a calcified relic of the era when it was created, it's a product of its people. We're seeing the new generations connecting from all over the world at a time when the foundational HNers are fading away, and sometimes when there's friction with my expectations of civility and etiquette in discourse and it feels like the noise is drowning out the signal and I yearn for the smaller, quieter days, I take that as my queue that I need to step back and appreciate that this is their time, too.

[bdelmas]

I think there are less experts on HN than years ago or a decade ago. And the culture of HN is getting slightly changing to a more Reddit culture every year.

It’s too bad because it’s the only place I know where you have experts in tech but also in other industries. And where I got very interesting discussions.

[kilroy123]

I think a larger problem is that a lot of YC folks just use Bookface instead of HN.

[whamlastxmas]

People have been claiming HN is turning into Reddit for over a decade to the point it's in the guidelines to not make the comparison

[mancerayder]

There's unfortunately someone who is posting some HN articles in a hackernews subreddit. I think that's contributed to the rise of Mr. Hot Take One-Liner Mic Drop, that posts something with 20 one liner replies, always at the top. If that continues happening I'm out.

One interesting factoid, since I can remember on HN, if you ever likened a conversation to Reddit they'd downvote you to grey. There are two ways to read that - Reddit is fine, don't criticize it; Reddit is embarrassing, don't diminish the conversation by comparing us to it.

[j-bos]

Thanks appreciate the broader context in this post. As to your meta comment, besides bots, I think a lot of people are facing a great deal of pain and fear. They're emotional and even in hn a critical mass has switched to reading and writing with their gut. Good vibe project, analyse the level of emotionality in comments over time, I'd bet it's gone vertical in the past few months.

[LeChuck]

Also, never explicitly stating their point. Only asking leading questions.

[ptero]

I agree with your "sensationalism is bad" take; especially as meaningful, non-incendiary comments now often get quickly downvoted for viewpoint, not tone (IMO downvoting should cost 0.1-0.3 karma). But not with "nothing to see in CB gold holdings fluctuations" view:

R1. But central bank gold holdings are rising organically, and partially at the expense of US treasuries. CB gold holdings have been dropping for 35 years, until about 2015. The price rise of gold from 2005 to 2015 did not reverse this trend. From 2015 to 2019 gold price did not rise, but reported holdings did. The recent doubling of the gold price muddies things a little, but the trend is clear.

R3. Reported gold purchases have trended down in 2025 and 2026, probably due to price doubling. But they are still positive. Emerging markets did not sell into this strength to build up more liquid holdings (UST) as more effective tools to support their economies against future malaise. Even "trending down" part is muddy, too, because some countries CB do not report it. China, an elephant in the room, started better obfuscating its holdings, including gold, since COVID.

R4. Yes. Gold owned by CB strognly trended down since 1980. That trend stopped in 2005 and reversed somewhere between 2005 and 2015. And likely accelerated in the last few years.

As a side note, I personally see USTs losing dominance as a reserve asset as a good thing. USG needs some checks on its spending, and world being willing to buy long dated treasuries at below inflation rates incentivizes the "we do not need to solve real problems, we can just print more money" mindset. My 2c.

[afpx]

Well, having tracked soft-science experts for 30 years, I have to say they're wrong over 50% of the time. Moreso, if it's coming from media that's owned by the same country that is causing evil.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/russias-central-ban...

[whamlastxmas]

Since the advent of the internet, and in fact conversation any in format, people have not overly cared about facts. This isn't a new phenomenon

[temp8830]

Low quality: when someone insinuates that the part of the establishment who play "good cop" are not saints.

[vitaflo]

Reddit has been leaking into HN for years. It’s just finally reached equilibrium.

[mikewarot]

>everything to do with gold more than doubling in price in a year.

Gold's price doesn't change, it's 42 2/9 US Dollar per fine troy ounce[1], and has been since 1973.

The problem is that this exchange rate hasn't been enforced, or adjusted since then. This allows the spot price to set the effective price of the dollar in a reciprocal arraignment.

Since, the "Gold Window" was closed by executive order, I posit that, In theory, Donald Trump could get a bunch of conspirators together, with 10.4 Billion in cash (the "Book Value" of the US Gold Reserves), and direct the Secretary of the Treasury to re-open the gold window, in private, and drain the US reserves, personally.

Edit: Nope... the law changed, thank goodness.

If the US somehow re-anchored the Dollar to Gold, the deflationary collapse would crush the economy everywhere, instantly, as all dollars outstanding would increase in real value by a factor of >100, and all debts would crush most people, companies, and economies.

So, realistically, if we wanted to re-anchor the dollar, the new value would have to be greater than the current spot price. To fully back all dollars outstanding, it would be somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 US Dollars per fine ounce.

I had previously expected this to happen a generation from now, but thanks to the complete collapse of institutional memory, and the current administration, I now expect it to happen before the end of the next administration.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/does-the-federal-reserve...

[expedition32]

Everything is politics. Which makes people who want to avoid it look delusional.

As for polarization that's been the modus operandi in my country for at least 500 years. Everyone hates everyone but the alternative was the French, English or Spanish so what can you do? Turns out you actually really don't need to love your neighbour.

[rapnie]

> Everything is politics.

This is mentioned often, but is also such a broad generalization that it is not constructive in any meaningful way. If everything is politics, then it can be eliminated from both sides of the equation. Focus on real and immediate problems at hand and providing concrete solutions need not have "politics" label slapped onto it by default, esp. where the ideological infighting this attracts complicates having open and frank discussions based on the facts. "Politics" has become a weaponised word often used to derail good initiatives, and with great success. The mindset that everything is politics may be contributor to that.

[Fricken]

This is just HN. We're explicitly not productive or constructive. We're not solving the world's problems. We're just shooting the shit. This is a forum for wasting time. I guess it wouldn't be HN without the delusions of self-importance.

[manuelmoreale]

> Everything is politics.

Everything you want to be politics is politics. Caring for other people shouldn't be politics. Being a decent human being shouldn't be politics. There are plenty of things that aren't politics unless you decide you want to turn them into politics.

[lazide]

The issue is when you get down to the edge cases, you get into politics again.

Is ‘caring’ (what does that mean exactly?) for someone on death row good or bad? You’ll likely find splits in answers along ‘political’ lines, especially depending on things like the nature of the crime, who the victim was, etc.

Is ‘caring’ (again, in what way?) for someone in Palestine good or bad? Or worth how much money to do? Similar split. How about Iran?

What about someone in the inner cities? Who doesn’t work?

Etc.

Hand wavy general statements are easy to have, but when it gets down to actual implementation is when real groups of people start to have very different concrete opinions on how it should be done.

You’ll also find lots of shaming among the group and against ‘outsiders’ trying to enforce idealogy. And if you think that part doesn’t happen, just read your own comment - it’s a mild form of that!

That is politics.

[manuelmoreale]

> ‘caring’ (what does that mean exactly?)

caring: (adjective) displaying kindness and concern for others.

If you look at this definition of caring and find a way to turn it into a politics issue that's your problem, not mine.

If you scale a problem up, then yes, you get into politics. If you scale it all the way down, politics disappear. If you see your next-door neighbor struggling with something and you can help, you should. That's not politics. That's called being a decent human being.

> Hand wavy general statements are easy to have

I agree. In fact "everything is politics" is a stupid, hand wavy statement.

> You’ll also find lots of shaming among the group and against ‘outsiders’ trying to enforce idealogy. And if you think that part doesn’t happen, just read your own comment - it’s a mild form of that!

Disagreement != enforcing ideology, at least in my world. And if you don't see it that way, then I guess you're guilty of doing the precise thing you're commenting on.

[lazide]

Under that definition, ‘Caring’ can mean anything from hopes and prayers to major economic sacrifices.

With that struggling neighbor, are you talking about helping them take out their trash at night when they’re tired - or paying unemployment benefits for years?

Notably, in my experience, the ones who talk the most usually just keep talking - and aren’t the ones on the hook for actually doing the hard caregiving when things are really tough. But hey, maybe you’re different?

One big difference we have here is you’re again talking hand waving generalities, and I’m talking concrete economic behaviors and policy. It’s easy to say ‘if you can help you should’, it’s harder when it’s ’where is the line for “can” and “should” exactly when we’re talking millions of people and trillions of dollars’, and people you’ll likely never meet in your life - and taxes that definitely come out of your paycheck each month.

Move the line too much one way, and it incentivizes being a victim. Move it too much the other way, and it crushes people with legitimate problems. Both are real issues.