I think asking in public was a good idea, but now that this article is out there, and flagged, and now that you've posted a followup, I think it's time to email HN and ask. The story will be much stronger with an addendum: "I emailed Hacker News asking about the flag, and they declined to comment."
Without any disrespect to you John, I think HN is simply tired of your pro-Apple, anti-EU takes. I’ve been reading your posts since 2008-ish and find myself rolling my eyes nowadays most of the time. I wish you would criticize Apple more like Marco does. You have some good takes but it’s rare lately
Based on my understanding of HN's algorithm, users with a lot of karma have disproportionate power when voting or flagging. It seems like one of the HN denizens hates your guts and flags your posts at every chance.
No, that’s not true at all. I don’t monetize by page views and never have. I don’t really care about the traffic from HN at all. If they simply stated that Daring Fireball was on a “too popular already” list of sites that never appear on HN, I’d applaud that.
Do you know when it actually started? Did you post something around that time that could have pissed off a lot of HN users? You might have got heavily flagged
Have you considered a voting ring? I'm pretty sure HN has had anti-vaxxer voting rings during and just after the pandemic. I'm less sure of a pro-conservative-politics voting ring, but a little more evidence could convince me.
Apple Newsroom posts hit the front page anytime new stuff comes out. I don’t think it’s anti Apple bias. I think it’s just the particular taste of the mods and readers. I don’t really love to see regular posts from Krebs or Graham there either, it’s nice to feel like constantly changing sources.
2017, eh? Did you say something disparaging against Dear Leader that year? Maybe it has nothing to do with your tech takes and everything to do with rightfully calling jackasses jackasses. Call it the rise of the incels. You got gamergated.
If you can do it well — and test it, definitely go for it.
But by the looks of what is actually online, many people *think* they can do it, but their web sites end up with egregious bugs on mobile, eg. content clipped off the side, header taking up half the screen, 25% side margins…
No, I don’t think that is the right conclusion. People need education. We can’t just be telling them what to do. They need to learn and understand the why behind these things.
Cultural changes are glacially slow and require a lot of effort.
I think there’s something to a couple of points raised in the hn discussion:
1. Insta-flagging for political reasons
2. Apple is increasingly unpopular with developers because of its anti-competitive and rent-seeking practices, which have been getting worse, considering Apple’s scale.
This second part is the most important, I think. If there’s no good will towards Apple, it’s likely that there won’t be good will towards an Apple centric blog (by a thoughtful Apple -overall- fan). Now: it does suck because it blocks discussion.
I never ventured over to HN, but I do find this interesting. Maybe one of your readers has an inside connection. FWIW, I remember DF with comments; they were mostly a way for people to attack you (I didn't agree), but there are many times I would like a comment section on your wonderful blog.
I suspect there might be bots or a group of individuals whose sole purpose is to flag posts related to specific topics. When I consider the time elapsed and the number of upvotes for some of my posts, they should have been on the front page, but they weren’t. So, the flags are the only explanation.
John, who cares what Orange Reddit thinks about you. The reality is it's a bunch of people LARPing as "founders" showing off how smart they are and one-upping each other. The current mod there pushes his own personal stuff all the time. That's probably the issue. He probably hates you because Apple.
tbh, that's what I expected when I saw the post. It's less HN prejudice against DF, more against antagonistic meta discussion (even if justifiably antagonistic).
There hasn't been much HN meta discussion in awhile, actually.
I mean, if you really want people to comment on your blog posts, why not allow commenting directly on your website? seems kind of odd to obsess over moderation policies of a 3rd party aggregator site, which you have no control over..
Comments
You enjoy the commentary on HN (your words), but disallow it in your blog.
All you want is the traffic from HN.
community moderation has always been a double-edged sword; we need it to filter out the noise, but the definition of noise is…noisy
https://paulgraham.com/wtax.html
They seems so fair though and incapable of subterfuge... :)
That and Apple has really nose-dived in popularity among the tech intelligentsia — your site could be swept up in that.
But now I won’t.
So I never downvoted you .. but I don't usually upvote blogs unless they are totally brilliant.. and about something technical which interests me.
Most web sites that do “responsive” stuff just end up completely broken on small screens. The best advice is Just. Don't.
But by the looks of what is actually online, many people *think* they can do it, but their web sites end up with egregious bugs on mobile, eg. content clipped off the side, header taking up half the screen, 25% side margins…
Cultural changes are glacially slow and require a lot of effort.
1. Insta-flagging for political reasons
2. Apple is increasingly unpopular with developers because of its anti-competitive and rent-seeking practices, which have been getting worse, considering Apple’s scale.
Insane that it is flagged.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43489058
There hasn't been much HN meta discussion in awhile, actually.
Love. LOVE. This line.
I doubt they’ll respond but your site is big enough that it could merit a response.