[recitedropper]

Seems to me like Anthropic is desperately trying to find as many product-market fits as possible before they IPO. They're reaching a chaotic weekly release cadence--each new product chockful of unclear, overlapping capability with their previous.

Combine that with the obvious hackernews manipulation that somehow gets each and every haphazard release instantly to the top, and you can see they're starting to feel some real heat.

[johnfn]

It’s interesting to claim that because everything they do goes to the top on hacker news that they must be in trouble. I haven’t heard that particular chain of effect before.

[recitedropper]

Feeling some heat != in trouble. Just that the pressure cooker is turning to a higher temp.

But, I'll gladly admit that I am bias: I'm tired of seeing blatant astroturfing by a company whose main marketing tactic is to play on societal fear, while simultaneously employing safety theatre to look like the "good guys".

So take my opinion with a grain of salt :)

[cruffle_duffle]

It could also be that this is an exciting new, fast changing technology that happens to directly overlap and significantly impact the core audience of the site. I don’t think any form of maliciousness or secret astroturfing is required at all.

This stuff has changed a ton of what it means to exist in this whole “tech space”. The entire software development lifecycle got put into a stick blender and is in the process of getting mixed up in new and unusual ways.

It’s super cool. I haven’t been this excited about our industry since way back when the universe was just starting to get onto dialup and I grabbed my very first mp3 or wrote my first shitty program in VB or when AJAX was just entering the universe.

I think a lot of people forgot how fast shit changes in this industry and how learning new things is one of the most important skills to being successful. Everything changes all the time.

This is a tech site called hacker news. Where else would something like this be constantly discussed?

[nerptastic]

I agree — right now it's "all eyes on AI". They are moving fast, I don't think there's some evil plan behind the scenes. They're trying to build software super-weapons, and they're trying all sorts of different things because they can iterate quickly.

Of course the articles are going to get to the top. It's all anyone is thinking about, and has been for the last few years. I keep wondering if we're going to reach some sort of inflection point where the hype starts to die down, but then another "tool" is released and everyone is convinced that this is the one that will take the jobs. It's a bit tiring, but this is the brave new world.

[recitedropper]

I think it's probably both in the end. Anthropic has a lot of fans, and combine that with excited employees and investors, they probably don't need to do much explicit astroturfing to reach top of HN.

But they also desperately need users (and the data those users bring) to build their products, and the people who do have the power to manipulate this site are on their team. And it does get tiring to see a new Claude feature with like 1 comment and 25 points right at the top, multiple times in the last two week. Keeping their needs in mind, it has begun to look like manipulation, even if the above effect could explain it.

I'm glad the technology foments it excitement for you. The idea that we can share intellectual processes broadly and implement them without the previously requisite skills will obviously change the world. That it could change the world for the better, excites me too.

But many of us have our excitement tampered by the messaging, the questionable ethics behind how it has been done, and the fact that a real % of the space is basically driven by eschatological thinking. And it especially annoys me that Anthropic is the company whose messaging simultaneously encourages that eschatological thinking, and preys upon the emotional reactions it creates.

I think it is increasingly clear--if you look at recent public sentiment and feel what is in the air--that they are a villain in this aspect. I don't think we want the people who believe they are building the future to be doing so both out of fear--of China--and gaining power through others' fear of what they are doing.

But villains can ultimately do good in the world, despite their villainy. Let's hope that is how it plays out.

[cruffle_duffle]

I mean you aren’t wrong. It’s just I don’t think it requires any kind of vote manipulation to see why ai company releases hit the front page. Back in browser war days it was the same thing.

[3sdfs]

Correct they're trying to bamboozle the stock market.

Im looking at this product and thinking - so...? Where's the vision?

Oh there is none. Its about spraying and praying that the hype continues and feeding off analysts who don't really understand most of the firms that they spend all day studying the valuation of.