LOL, you're on a social network right now. HN is one. Yeah, it's semi-anonymous, but there are many users with known names here.
HN skips many of the dark patterns that other social medias have:
- no infinite scroll (you have to click on "More") - no personal recommendation - no feedback loop between your upvotes and the feed - no messaging or following between users
HN looks a lot more like news groups from back in the days.
The comment threads are basically "infinite scroll". They're paginated once they hit 500 or something. Scanning a SM post takes 2 seconds, HN comments much longer.
Its not the pagination that matters, it is the lack of a feed that you can keep scrolling. The front page is paginated at 30.
Longer comments are a good thing.
But I can’t follow them. I don’t get notifications when they post new links or comments, I can’t send them specifically my links and comments. I have no groups or circles.
HN is more of a discussion forum and not for connecting with others.
Nobody is "connecting" on social media anymore, they are just liking and commenting on whatever random thing the algo throws at them.
You and I are the doing same thing, commenting on posts made by strangers.
Wrong, social network is centered around the concept of "you" and your "friends", where the content itself is not as important.
There is no concept of "friends" on a forum like HN, since people purely gather to discuss topics of interest here.
> Wrong, social network is centered around the concept of "you" and your "friends", where the content itself is not as important.
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