Ask HN: Anyone else feel this community has changed recently?
For the first time ever I questioned today whether I should continue to use HN anymore so I'm writing this partly to explore my own thoughts and to see if anyone else feels similarly.
1. AI, AI, AI.
I get it. AI is the big thing right now, but I find AI posts fundamentally less interesting than the traditional tech content that used to be posted here. A post containing someone's qualitative opinion on how different AI models compare when drawing pelicans simply isn't as technically interesting as something like this, https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times-by-70/
2. Does any build startups here anymore?
Again, I get it. I largely quit trying to bootstrap my own startup ideas in the late 2010s. The industry became too competitive for a solo founder without significant financial backing to have much of a chance of success. And today it's even harder. But I think this has changed HN from a place where you used to frequently see people launching cool new projects to a place where people just discuss the latest big tech AI model launch.
3. Politicisation and intolerance
One of the things I've always liked about HN was that it's a very open minded place. And it still is in many ways, especially when compared to other platforms like X and Reddit, but even here I've noticed comments becoming more one-sided and those with less popular opinions more frequently being flagged and downvoted.
Perhaps it's just me, but I never downvote or flag people unless I genuinely think their comment is cruel or aggressively disregarding the guidelines.
4. Is it just me?
I know I've become increasingly nostalgic to the internet I grew up with... Everything was so much more exciting back then, and yet everything felt so in reach. Sites like YouTube were revolutionary yet built by just three people. Same with sites like MySpace and Facebook which again were hacked together by a handful of people, at least in the early days.
Today things rarely feel new and everything feels so far from reach. AI, well LLMs, have probably been the first "new" thing for years now, yet they're completely different from what's come before. Past tech was primarily built by people for people. LLMs are cool tech, but they're built by companies for companies. YouTube was built because some people thought it would be cool to build a website for sharing videos with friends. That didn't happen with LLMs. Companies just thought it would be interesting to build AGI so invested millions of dollars recruiting teams of researchers to try to build that. No one is asking for it and I'm not sure anyone outside silicon valley even wants it... These are fundamentally inhuman products. Their promise isn't to entertain or connect us, but to automate our work, or just outright replace us.