[dyscrete]

Of course take everything with a grain of salt.

The Hacker News community's comments are actually more intellectual than the writer's click-bait propaganda, and leaves room for debate on the author's one-sided views.

Edit: grammar

[rodgerd]

HN is as much an echo chamber as any other moderated community; the fact you find it a more agreeable echo chamber doesn't mean much.

[AnkhMorporkian]

Absolutely. Hell, it's much more of an echo chamber than most communities as it's so tightly moderated. Moderation begets echoes.

[rtpg]

My gut feeling is that community voting is more than enough to make HN an echo chamber.

Think about it, if you see a slightly greyed-out comment, that becomes a data-point in interpreting the comment.

Though compared to other places with such strong voting mechanisms, the echo chamber seems to be less in effect. Only topic I can think about where it really comes out is articles on Uber, bizarrely.

[arrrg]

I really don’t think it’s that simple. Plenty of anarchic places are also aggressively homogenous in the views expressed there and their overall culture (e.g. 4chan and sites like that).

I think in those places aggression simply serves to push people who would think differently out.

[AnkhMorporkian]

I'm not sure if that's true. While voting does definitely encourage an echo chamber, it requires moderation so that the true majority doesn't gain a foothold. If it weren't for the moderation on this site, it would be much like reddit.

[SquareWheel]

Which means nothing, because nearly every reddit community is different.

Moderation plays a small role in the HN community. Any "community bubble" is due to shared interests and a core set of guidelines. This seems like an excuse for making a libertarian rant and nothing more.

[AnkhMorporkian]

I'm far from a libertarian. I think moderation is a good thing, I just think we need to recognize that it creates bubbles in and of itself. If you want a more concrete reddit example, /r/lgbt and /r/ainbow would provide a concrete example. Moderation provides the tone for a community unless it remains totally unmoderated.

[jerf]

I would submit there's a significant difference between comment sites on the original site, and secondary comment sites like Slashdot, Reddit, and HN. The article is clearly about the former. I am not personally aware of a site that at scale (i.e., not a blog with a couple hundred commenters, tops) is worth reading the comments.

Sure, you can write complaints about Slashdot, Reddit, and HN (see siblings of this post competing to see who can slag on them the hardest), but at least there's a chance of some semblance of discussion. That is not a chance that big sites have.

[ZanyProgrammer]

The Guardian is Fox News for Anglo-American progressives (or at least a certain set of them).

[parfe]

Users are not permitted to comment freely on HN. Step too far out of line and your comment becomes invisible and you risk a shadow ban. This site offers the most vanilla, white bread, predictable discussion of any forum I frequent. No real surprise about what this user base wants.

[defineclean]

Your spot-on comment is already getting grayed out. Oh the irony.

If the truth hurts... downvote it so it can be hidden! Yeah, that'll show you!