What I find strange is that Hacker News feels oddly opaque. I’ve never met anyone who can clearly explain how it works in practice. Not just the rules, but the dynamics: what’s repeatable, what’s luck, and what actually matters.
By using the Kevin Bacon-number idea: I can usually get within three degrees of separation of well-known technologists like Linus Torvalds, but I can’t seem to get within three steps of someone who confidently understands how HN works.
So I’m asking sincerely: Does anyone here feel they understand Hacker News? If so, what are the real levers, and what do people consistently misunderstand?
PS: This question comes from a mix of genuine curiosity and personal frustration. I’m honestly trying to understand how HN works in practice.
The root of HN is a thing called 'startup news', that was changed very quickly and since then HN has been a focal point for techies of all sorts but also lots of other people from all walks of life and from a large variety of countries. It isn't 'one thing' to everybody that participates, just like a hammer is a different thing for a carpenter than it is for a masoner or a farmer.
The fact that after being a member for a couple of years you have this question indicates a lack of participation, not a lack of understanding.
Its also the currently last man standing in the continual growth and death of tech sites - Slashdot, digg, reddit - and the most surprising one to make it big.
You know a tech site is useful when you write about a bug and the maintainer comes out of the woodwork to fix it, something that I've seen happen in the last week on nh for the first time.
That's up to you, really, you can just ignore them. I know I do.
> So long as you know and avoid this it's surprisingly high quality. But that's there to lend more ligitimacy to ycombinator.
Probably, or maybe that is just an overly cynical take. If it were as bad as that I can think of a couple of very easy things they could do to improve on that and they aren't so for now I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Note that I'm not particularly impressed by anybody associated with YC except the mods here.
> Its also the last man standing in the continual growth and death of tech sites - Slashdot, digg, reddit - and the most surprising one to make it big.
So you're saying there is hope for Haskell?
> You know a tech site is useful when you write about a bug and the maintainer comes out of the woodwork to fix it, something that I've seen happen in the last week on nh for the first time.
There are some pretty funny instances of such interaction here, the best of which still has me in stitches after more than a decade.
Sure, it can be frustrating if you're trying to promote a product or farm karma on posts. But the fact that mostly nobody cares about karma means that you can post something and have it be evaluated on its technical, economic, social merits.
Obviously, there are caveats to this - i.e., anything US- and FAANG-related is bound to get much more activity than otherwise - but the overall atmosphere of HN is refreshing compared to Reddit.
As to how I (or anyone) could show this, here are a few example questions:
1. How many examples of stealthy but otherwise blatant promotion do you see in the comments? Not every astroturfing campaign will be successful or original, so you'd be able to notice some patterns. Plus, HN is already commercially oriented, and there's the "Show HN" option, so it reduces the incentives for astroturfing.
2. Alternatively, how much controversy is there around the specific type of forum? For some subreddits, for example, you'd be able to see counter-subreddits popping up when participants feel the mods are abusing their power to promote one type of opinion.
3. Is a certain type of political/brand-related opinion or interpretation always at the top of your comment feed? For example, if upvotes determine the order of the comments, do you consistently see fewer critical comments on things that you'd expect the community to react to in different ways.
4. Do you consistently see some contributors having more power in discussions over others? Other than the mods, obviously. If this is the case, karma (i.e., number of upvotes) often has more value.
Still, I could be wrong.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46309399
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
That’s a handwave trying to dismiss a host of valid concerns by lumping them together. It reads like “you probably want to game HN; stop doing so”.
Just a random issue that has been repeatedly brought up for at least a decade: HN is completely unusable for people with vision impairments relying on assistive technologies. It doesn’t use semantic HTML elements, it doesn’t use ARIA tags, its fonts and colors violate WCAG standards (which your browser’s dev tools will be happy to show you in detail), etc.
If the site is so blatantly unfriendly towards a significant minority of its potential users, apparently due to sheer negligence or “works for me” elitist attitude, I see no reason to believe that other aspects of the site are the way they are “on purpose”.
Accessibility is a problem and assuming it is as bad as you say it is it really should be addressed, agreed.
But that's completely orthogonal to being hard to game. And the concerns the OP brings up are unrelated to accessibility and indeed read more about instructions on how to game HN more successfully, otherwise why bring the VCs and the 'levers' into it in the first place?
YES.
> HN is completely unusable for people with vision impairments relying on assistive technologies.
For one, this is unrelated to allowing marketers to game the system.
For two, how much are you hyperbolizing there? I only ask because I was having a conversation in comments with a blind HN-er only like 3 days ago.
Yes accessibility would be nice, I agree, but if I’m understaffed, provide free as in beer service where being on the first page is worth millions in marketing spend and being top 1 for a few hours is worth tens if not hundreds so I’m constantly under attack from everyone and their dog who have anything at all to sell, it’s going to be hard to prioritize other things.
…yeah I agree they should hire an intern or something to just fix this on slow burn.
It's true that this place can be cryptic, and that has downsides—specifically, it can be confusing to newcomers, even to some newcomers who would make ideal HN users. That sucks.
But there's a key that unlocks most of the puzzles. That is to understand that we're optimizing for exactly one thing: curiosity. (Specifically, intellectual curiosity, since there are other kinds of curiosity too.) Here are links to past explanations about that: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
We try to elevate things that gratify curiosity: creative work, surprising discoveries, deep dives, technical achievements, unusual personal experience, whimsical unpredictability, good conversation, etc. And we try to demote things that run against curiosity, especially repetition, indignation, sensationalism, and promotion.
It gets complicated because you'll also see plenty of repetition, indignation, sensationalism, and promotion on HN—alas! This is the internet after all. But the site survives because the balance of these things stays within tolerable ranges, thanks to two factors: an active community which cares greatly about preserving this place for intended purpose (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html); and an owner (Y Combinator) which pays us to work on the site full time and mainly just wants us to keep it good, to the extent possible.
If you really want to figure this place out, the way to do it is as a reader. Hang out on the site, look at the mix of articles that make the frontpage, spend time in the discussion threads (hopefully the interesting sectors and not the flamey ones!), and over time your eyes will adjust.
What doesn't work—and this is good because we want it not to work—is approaching HN as a platform for promoting content. If you (<-- I don't mean you personally, but anyone) mainly care about "how can I use this thing to get attention for my startup/blog/project/newsletter", then you're operating in 'push' mode rather than 'pull' mode (or, even better, 'idle' mode). In that case you won't be curious because you're too focused on what you're wanting for extraneous reasons—and if you aren't in a state of curiosity, this place won't make sense. At least we hope it won't!
Yesterday the top comment on two stories I went to discuss had deep and meaningful content, before the last line which was a "and I talk about this stuff all the time on my newsletter [link]", and I was conflicted. Same poster each time.
The poster had done the HN thing: responded with thoughtful examination of TFA, unique and interesting insight, and I don't feel it was AI generated.
And then they marred it. They pushed something just slightly out of context. Not entirely, just a smidge.
I hope we can keep an eye on that sort of thing around here, it feels like it could slide into something...
The grey area is people constantly linking to their own blog, but the linked post is relevant (example [0]). Like, it's good when people post relevant links to diver deeper, but when it's constantly your own content, that irks me a bit.
[0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Like https://xkcd.com/810/
Purpose of hackernews as you said is fulfilling curiosity, its not a place where people should try to post to get eyeballs or something because their investors said so.
Honestly hackernews to me is a place where tinkering as a hobby is appreciated. I have read so many large threads here and ended up sometimes having a new point of view on something and so many posts here which make me want to be curious and tinker around too. I cannot really name something exactly which clicks on hackernews but that is what makes it unique and this does mean I cannot explain it to others sometimes since my hobbies are tangential to hackernews too, I just end up saying my hobby is tinkering with computers (currently only software)
A lot of the comments and input here make sense. I’ll follow your advice and observe HN for a while, looking for interesting topics that suit me.
"The royal you"
If you post when silicon valley wakes up on a weekday, you might get “initial” points faster, which leads to your submission being ranked higher up for a while and being more discoverable.
There are no "levers". People come to HN to discuss nerdy topics and those that have come to HN to help make those discussions more informed and interesting are welcome. Anyone who comes to HN to create buzz, drive site traffic, do SEO, or market something, whether it be a product or themselves, can expect an extremely frosty reception, particularly since the rate of spam submissions is high lately. And we are certainly not here to be a gauge of interest to any investors.
The one semi-exception is Show HN, which is intended to showcase something interesting that users can play with. There are separate specific guidelines for Show HN submissions (https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html) and tips from the site moderators (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638). Do note that among the tips is the following "Drop any language that sounds like marketing or sales. On HN, that is an instant turnoff. Use factual, direct language. Personal stories and technical details are great." If you have questions about the guidelines or tips, the site moderators can be reached through the email on the contact page linked at the bottom of the page.
Everyone wants to believe that their community doesn't have levers. But this is just wishful thinking, ego talking. Of course HN has levers, of course the community here can be manipulated.
The easiest way I can see would be to frame a helpful, curious question to which your service just happens to be the answer. So then you most an Ask HN like "can anyone help me to understand why people do X" followed by a few sentences of your thoughts, then at the end say "I've been working on a service to help with this but we don't seem to be getting much to traction, here's a link".
Another approach would be "nerd sniping". Post your site but don't mention anything about what it's for and instead say "I'm having a problem with SSR rendering with NextJS on my site" or something like that. You'll get massive engagement.
Nah, that would be obvious marketing to most. More sneaky would be answering the question with the recommendation from a different account in a way to promote your service and have that upvoted, but that requires more effort and skill I assume.
But in general yes, this community definitely can also be manipulated, but I would say it is one of the hardest to fool. The standard mentality here I actually would rather describe as critical instead of curious, but there is just lots of garbage being pushed and also my curiosity is limited.
This makes me think of a fun idea: Once a year on HN (April Fool's Day?), we can have a nerd sniping competition where commercial projects try to nerd snipe HN readers with submarine adverts.
Obviously anything can be manipulated, but HN has been remarkably resilient and if there is one thing the collective here is good at then it is at spotting patterns, even over a longer period of time. And once your business is banned from here there isn't really a way back in.
Two people that come to mind that normally generate an enormous number of upvotes and discussion are blog posts from Alyssa Rosenzweig (Asahi Linux GPU drivers) and Justine Tunney (Cosmopolitan Libc). Both of those projects trigger near-superhuman levels of nerd sniping (https://xkcd.com/356/). Few nerds can resist!
Final note: To me, this question feels like the "uncanny valley" of nerd discussion boards. Can you imagine posting something similar to LWN.net trying to figure out how to get your commercial project featured in a story?
For instance I submitted an article three times (spaced a year apart). The first two times the article got no upvotes. The third time it got 600+ and hit the top of the front page. It's just a matter of who happens to be looking at the New page at the time.
If someone has less votes and its still something I find interesting, I am more critic of the whole situation to upvote
But if someone already has 400 upvotes and is on the top of the site, I will look more into it with ("woah a lot of people upvoted, lets see why" and then read the comments and some of the comments are really brilliant that it becomes the reason why I upvote the post itself too
I am sure that hackernews doesnt really recommend it but I do feel like its something that I do subconsciously that I have observed and wanted to share. It does feel like random stuff but still in a way which still makes sense for the whole ethos of hackernews.
HN is very self-explanatory if you take it for what it is — a discussion forum. It’s a place where some people post ideas, questions, news, or projects and other people respond to them. That’s it. If you post something interesting or meaningful, then people will respond.
Your question makes me feel ancient because I fear that the concept of communicating to spark conversation (as opposed to communicating to promote or to manipulate or to drive traffic or to pull any number of other “levers”) is exceedingly a thing of the past.
That's an oversimplification. There are things that get responses because they're flamebait rather than interesting, and then even more interesting things that never get any discussion going.
I don't know if the residual factor is just "chance" or if there are controllable inputs involved.
(One thing I do suspect but cannot confirm is that article title has a large effect. Interesting stuff with bad title gets overlooked, and vice versa.)
This isn't unique to this technology: books with interesting titles and covers sell better than books with boring titles and covers, even if the latter has more interesting content.
I think what makes HN a little different is that a lot of places we might congregate online only exist for the flamebait, or are specifically built around engagement metrics to serve DAU/MAU numbers and advertising asks. You just happen to take a bit more chance on here than you would anywhere else, and that's absolutely 100% a good thing.
If there are controllable inputs that skew you to one side of the variance, I hope the moment someone discovers them, they are shut down - otherwise this place just becomes another hell-hole.
HN does have a much higher ratio of gems to dirt than any other place though, so I'm still here for the forseeable future :)
A simple way to refute this is to note that some links were posted multiple times and only got traction on the second or third time.
People accept that platforms should be centralised, and that they should harvest your data in order to sell it to adtech companies who will then feed it to an industry that learns in real-time how to prey on your darkest fears to sell you things you don't need but might make you feel slightly less sad for a second. And people just accept it: that's normal these days.
They even call it doom-scrolling, and don't ask "wait, should I want to scroll through actual doom? Is the occasional video that makes me smile really worth it all?"
Perhaps it's my age, but I can't understand anybody who says their main form of media consumption is YouTube. How? How do you actually put up with that, knowing what is behind every mouse movement and click, and the knowledge that every single pixel in front of you is being tweaked by robotic neuroscientists squeezing every drop out of A/B tests to make you feel like utter crap? Like, seriously, WTAF?
HN is popular within its niche precisely because it isn't like that. It is not "a platform", in the modern and now normalised sense. It links out to other sites and asks people to come back together to discuss what they saw there. Old school. No ad tracking. No doom scrolling. Pick what you like. Click it, don't click it. Discuss it, don't discuss it. Nobody is tracking "engagement". There's some gamification, but does anyone _really_ care?
This type of interaction is entirely native to my generation and older (I just squeak into millennial, on the older side), but feels completely bonkers to people who think Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are what is normal and how the Internet works.
Some of know they're not normal. We know they're aberrations, ghouls that prey on unwitting masses.
You just have to curate your feed and add stuff to playlists, not watch whatever is on the logged-out default home page.
Not sure what else to say.
I suppose if you created an account today you'd be fed a lot of garbage, but I've been watching YouTube often for at least a couple years.
Be somewhat novel, communicate very clearly (particularly what is' for and why you might want to use it, even if that seems obvious to you) and post around mid-morning PST so people can goof off from work to 'research' your interesting new thing.
- Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve tumor elimination in mice
Ah, progress on cancer. But in mice, where lots of things work but don't transfer to humans.
- What Is an Elliptic Curve?
A core concept in modern cryptography which I don't understand. The article helped.
- Learn Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Only HN would put something like this near the top of of the forum.
- Gemini 3 Flash: Frontier intelligence built for speed
This week in LLMs. Have to keep up.
- OBS Studio Gets a New Renderer
They're using Apple's Metal for talking to the GPU? How does portability work? OBS runs on Linux and Windows, too, but Metal runs only on Apple machines.
These are all interesting things, but they are not popular things. Or even commercially interesting things.
I would argue Gemini is popular and commercially interesting, but yes, mainly it is a curious topic, whether one is invested in the current hype, or not.
Another part of the equation is topic and tone. There's no sophisticated algorithm, but it's an eclectic forum, so if your post sounds like pure marketing or self-promo, it will probably not make it far. You need to offer something of value to readers, not to you.
An interesting quirk of the system is that people who upvote or comment on stories don't necessarily read them. A lot of HN discussion boils down to people reacting to the prompt in the subject line. There are publications that learned how to game this. I don't think it's a template worth following, but it sells...
HN is not a nail. Stop trying to hit it.
Sometimes my friends post on social media platform A "Hey, I've just posted on platform B. Upvotes appreciated."
Or a newsletter will say "please share this post on…"
Or people on Discord / Slack / Matrix will say "people are being mean to me on platform C, where are my defenders at?"
HN feels organic - and is pretty well moderated - but it isn't immune to family & friends giving something an initial boost.
But if no one wants to discuss it, the post will falter.
As for the other levers, it is hard to say. Sometimes the posts I've worked hardest on with the most detail just die a death. But the half-finished thought casually tossed off will Do Numbers. Outrage sometimes works, but it is a fickle friend to tame. Catchy titles aren't clickbait (despite what some people say) but they work best when they are descriptive.
And, finally, people can and do resubmit stuff. What doesn't work at 0900 Monday will be popular at 1700 Tuesday. Why? That's just the way it is.
In the end, it is all luck. But, as the saying goes, the harder you work the luckier you get.
Probably more than 70% of your post's impact will come from a catchy headline. People will be curious about your headline, and click through. And then, upvote if they find it interesting.
If the post is interesting but the headline isn't, then, well, bad luck.
Once a post gathers enough momentum, it goes to the front page. Then, there are a thousand bots on Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, etc, that repost articles that got to the front page, and it gathers even more momentum from a large portion of technologists that don't have an HN account but follow these bots.
Without effort, anyone can do it. Without passion, it's just work. Without curiosity, it's not hacking.
Don't tell the mods!
I personally have no clue why and I kinda like it. Like probably many others I come here to find interesting content and have interesting conversation because there are a lot of genuinely interesting people on this site.
But if you're trying to minmaxing your presence on HN, well good luck.
[0] : https://manuelmoreale.com/thoughts/what-i-learned-by-being-1...
For instance, there is serious hate here about web interop with classic noscript/basic (x)html browsers (namely basic HTML forms with at best <video> <audio> elements, optional simple CSS, often a document which is a "semantic" 2D html table with proper ids for navigation, encrypted URL parameters are your friends).
And AIs...
I bet that this isn’t an exaggeration. Being highly-ranked on HN can probably give a startup a huge advantage, in the hype department.
I guarantee that LLMs are currently being feverishly trained on HN front pages, for the last few years, and we’re gonna be seeing “link farm” sites, specifically designed to rank high on HN.
I enjoy it here. I don’t hang out on any other social media, so this place gets a lot of my time (I’m writing this right now, as I’m working up some tired, to go back to sleep). I’ve spent my entire life, hanging around people that intimidate and inspire me, so this place feels like home.
If it turns into a Dead Internet site, I’ll probably pack it in. I have left a number of sites, over the years. It would make me sad, as I’ve lasted longer here, than anywhere else.
Most of my karma is from comments, not submissions. I like to engage.
use prefixes [Tell HN: Ask HN: Show HN:] and suffixes [ [PDF] [video] [1995] ] where needed.
be a human being, dont repost, or post promotional materials for adspace, cultivate a nuts and guts discussion for any project you promote rather than a sales ad.
The HN audience upvotes it or downvotes it or flags it or ignores it.
From the reaction, you get an impression of the reception of the thing.
That's... it.
A system that somehow allows you to tame AI agents' unruly use of git (is that it?)
I see you did use Show HN, and that didn't work.
What you could have done is email hn@ycombinator.com telling them that your Show HN is not being upvoted. This happens, and usually dang and others mod will take a look and if you're within the guidelines will give it a small boost so it shows up in the main Show HN page. Then you're on your own.
Make sure your catchphrase, or hook is well written, cause most people here will not read past "Make Agents a Safe Collaborator in your App".
Anyways, as others said here. There are no ways to "game" HN. the closest you will manage is what you just did, basically asking for help...
That's the key, ask for help, and people will respond. People are nice, and they are willing to procrastinate their intellect away for free.
> “Just post it on Hacker News or Reddit and show that people love it.”
From my experience, both HN and Reddit have the worst traffic. I got "tens of thousands" of visitors from both with exactly zero conversion. I am now getting a few hundreds a month from Google and other sources and the conversion rate is roughly 20-25%. So pretty much not worth it to pursue HN/Reddit for your startup though your mileage would probably vary.
I'd use HackerNews for what it is, a news site for casual/mixed information with sometimes interesting discussions. You could have much better levers in other places.
The only really opaque thing I’ve found is the anti spam/anti flame war rules but it’s not crazy to keep those secret and I say that as someone who gets temp banned by those rules on here frequently
edit: oh, you should also go to your profile and set showdead to `yes` if you want to see the unfiltered forum. You'll get about 10% controversial opinions and 90% green name accounts posting spam.
Ah and if the poster's name is green in your browser it means they are a very new account
Unless you're building a start up where the potential customers are specifically HN and Reddit readers, get the hell away from those investors. They're idiots.
As lovely and wonderful as the readers of HN and Reddit are, being loved on HN or Reddit means essentially nothing. People here are the magpies of the internet - we love seeing the new shiny thing but that does not tell you it will be a success with the people who might want to buy it. For every Dropbox posted here there are hundreds of Show HN posts that didn't really go anywhere despite having tons of very positive commentary.
If you want to show investors that your start up's product has potential post about it where your customers go and get feedback from people who might give you their money. If you really want to prove your start up has potential, sell to those people and actually get their money. If you can get a sale based on your prototype/proof-of-concept/MVP product that is worth more than a million "Yeah, looks ace, I'd buy that if it was <price that's far too low>." posts from us.
Surely idiot investors are the easiest to get money from?
I played inscryption (a really good game) and magpie had the sigil of being able to take any card from the deck and oh my, it was a beauty seeing a magpie or the sigil because that meant that I could then get any overpowered card I had from the deck.
I am sure people might not understand it if they haven't played the game but everytime I hear magpie, Its almost obligatory for me to mention inscryption. (also the same goes for stoat and ouroborous too)
That said, it also often happen that you share something and it is not picked up, even though after 10 years I think I can predict what HN loves. Sometimes a repost after 2 days will hit the front page, certainly not always.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
Like the person creating coloring pages from images using Stable Diffusion. Many HN users would just do it themselves, but many parents have no idea how to do that.
Makes me wonder how many potentially successful businesses never get built, because too many people are trying to build the next big YC project with AI or whatever tech is hype today.
More likes “claim” to do it themselves. Commenting on the Internet is easy. Making effort is not.
> Makes me wonder how many potentially successful businesses never get built, because too many people are trying to build the next big YC project
The can do it yourself crowd will still claim anything can be done themselves no matter big or small.
- the older it is, the less score
- the more votes and comments it has, the higher the score
- penalties reduce the score ( eg. By moderator)
How it works for the end-user:
- People browsing in newest, make it visible in the main page.
- Most people see the main page
Result: interesting topics go to the main page
Unless this has changed, I don't think comments contribute positively to the score. Apparently they (used to?) contribute negatively if there are more comments than upvotes and the number of comments exceeds some threshold. See e.g. this very old article: https://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-reall...
> In order to prevent flamewars on Hacker News, articles with "too many" comments will get heavily penalized as "controversial". In the published code, the contro-factor function kicks in for any post with more than 20 comments and more comments than upvotes. Such an article is scaled by (votes/comments)^2. However, the actual formula is different - it is active for any post with more comments than upvotes and at least 40 comments. Based on empirical data, I suspect the exponent is 3, rather than 2 but haven't proven this.
Good: "Why I used Postgres to write a web app"
Money. A spot as US citizen to get into startup school.
Money. An investment from a noble mind to another noble mind.
Money. Pass information to fellows at YC (who are from a different domain, see YC as a cool place) they crowd and promote (seems organic)
Money. Well, then the product or the tech fades, because its a bloatware.
They retry the same thing again with next batch of people. Keeps the forum running. The maintainers get retired or really tired.
Readers. I have seen this one before. Reader. Well, now, you are old
If there is one thing to note, it’s that obvious self-promotion is not good. Technical details are more interesting than sales pitches.
I found out, the other day, that if you post too many comments in too short a time (also undocumented) your final comment is deleted (sorry, you just lose it) instantly with a somewhat snarky message about how you post too much.
I am a little mystified about what community Hacker News serves. It doesn't seem to be the kind of hackers I grew up with (fiercely skeptical, a la 2600 magazine), because, as one example, skepticism about AI or self-driving vehicles is generally downvoted.
Not so much Hacker News as Next Shiny Toy News.
Even so, I know of no better way to discover interesting tools and trends than Hacker News.
But the reason they won't tell you is that the entire reason it works is because you don't know.