Same. The GPT5 “Robot” persona does what no custom “be terse”, “no fluff”, etc. custom prompt ever could. It actually makes ChatGPT terse and to-the-point and eliminates (or at least greatly reduces) fluff. I love it.
My thesis is that HN would like you to think their moderation is highly transparent, and it's very clear that the core HN audience believes that to be true, but that in fact it is not transparent at all.
If the problem is with my writing "being not that interesting or useful and also contentious", how then do you explain Daring Fireball ranking #3 here from 2007-2021 but dropping to #78 from 2021-2025. Do you think my writing was that much more interesting and useful (and less contentious?) for the first 14 years of HN but changed suddenly in 2021?
Or do you think HN's hidden admin moderation changed suddenly around 2021?
I think the overall conclusion from this investigation must be: We'll never know because at the end of the day it's HN's site, and they are the only ones who know how moderation works. They have the logs and (presumably) the materialized dashboards showing what's going on, and we only get a peek at it when the lead moderator (dang) pulls back the curtain a little. He is very friendly, and actually very, very prompt at responding to questions (both over E-mail, and in-thread) but I've always thought the responses about moderation activity are pretty opaque. Any time something that looks like shenanigans gets mentioned, it's always vaguely attributed to "user moderation" or "automated algorithms" such as the flamewar detection, with very few admissions of HN staff putting their thumbs on the scale (in either direction). Best case, if it's true that everything is due to user moderation, it would appear the site is pretty vulnerable to organized brigading (for or against specific topics).
So we'll never know for sure. Please keep writing. I visit here -and- have your site bookmarked because I appreciate the pro-Apple take on tech news, too.
EDIT: Aaaaaaand, in the time that I typed this comment, the article predictably went from normal to user-flagged.
And just to clarify, if enough people flag submissions, but not enough people, then it can get buried but not get the "flagged" tag? Because very few of the DF posts actually seem to get that tag.
But maybe even some light flagging, plus high engagement-to-view ratio (esp. if engagements go many levels deep fast), may cause some "unwanted" content to be buried.
I'm a fan of both HN and DF. If I assume my worldview is accurate, that both are above-board, then the only explanation I have left is flamewar detection. Your links get too many comments—plus some flags sprinkled in there—too fast relative to upvotes. So, your posts get too much engagement.
There is a twisted logic to that algo, esp. for a "News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters"-flavored attitude, and esp. for a site that's trying to be as efficiently managed as possible.
Plus, Scott Alexander noted recently a decline in Substack due to deboosting on X, but also that just too many people are now Substacking, many of whom are good, and a lot who are just clones. And on the Dithering about "Rotten", you and Ben both concur that it feels like a while since either of you went viral. So as soon as a solo blogger blows up, the system quickly co-opts that blend of content into other media channels. i.e., Indie generally doesn't last.
Something weird definitely happened in 2015/2016, for sure (maybe the start of the anti-engagement algo). But your blog was also crazy popular between the iPhone's release and Steve Jobs' death. That was probably the most dynamic time in Apple's history (post-Sculley), with plenty of controversy worthy of exacting critique (Antennagate, etc.)
This is fantastic, and I'm embarrassed I didn't think to do this year-by-year analysis myself. But then how do you square up the tepid response here to
Yeah, I can only speculate on that one. It was a well-written, high-level epiphany, that, as you mentioned on the podcast, was purely editorial. It was one of my favorite DF posts, but I don't think everybody got it.
> Apple is know for stopping shipping pre-release hardware to people that are honest in their review and that might call out questionable choice.
I've been doing this for a long time and I'm not aware of a single case where this has happened. I'd love to write about this, so please let me know which reviewers, who had previously been seeded with review unit hardware from Apple, were dropped after they wrote honest review. (I don't think what you're describing is, in any way, an accurate description of Apple's relationship with Lewis Hilsenteger.)
How then do you explain DF ranking #3 from 2007-2021, but dropping to #78 from 2021-2025? Are you saying my writing was significantly more interesting and useful for the first 14 years but dropped off a cliff starting in 2021, and the keen HN audience noticed the change immediately?
You're making a perhaps-legitimate case for why DF should never have ranked well at HN. But the data shows that the opposite is true: for 14 years it was very popular here.
I've enjoyed your work for close to multiple decades, probably fell on it back in 2005 from MacRumors, but much less in recent times. And I don't want to knock anyone's work, but I'll give you my perspective in good faith.
1. Writing about Apple simply isn't interesting anymore. Nor has it been for close to a decade. They lost me around the butterfly keyboard fiasco.
I know this isn't the full body of your work, but it's plenty of it. As a professional in the tech space for over 25 years, I went from being a devout Apple follower (installed the OSX beta on my Tibook back in the day), to basically not caring. They've gone from being innovative and evolving, and the best mix of Unix+GUI, to just being a system I'm forced to use for work. I'd rather use a Thinkpad/XPS/etc with Linux for anything else.
2. Your writing has gotten dramatically more... cynical over the years? Maybe it's just a side effect of growing older, as I know I have too. But it's also why I stopped blogging on my blog, which was popular enough in enough circles.
Like I said, this is just my perspective, so you can call me full of crap or whatever.
> 1. Writing about Apple simply isn't interesting anymore. Nor has it been for close to a decade. They lost me around the butterfly keyboard fiasco.
I think this might have a lot to do with it. I considered myself a devout Apple fanboy a decade ago, but every software release and new product they've developed has been less and less interesting. It feels like they're abandoning me as a customer as I get older. And every former fanboy has that one "straw broke the camel's back" moment they can point to where they lost the faith. For you it was the terrible keyboards, for many it was the headphone jack. For me, it was a tiny change: They quietly dropped support for 1080i resolution around the time of macOS 10.5 or 11. Suddenly my Mac that ran my home theater could no longer drive my TV, just because Apple decided "fuck this guy, we're not going to support this anymore."
I still have an iPhone 7. No phone released since then have I really cared about enough to bother upgrading. I don't give a shit about emojis and chat stickers and more annoying notifications that butt into my life.
Who knows why that is. Maybe HN's audience has changed over the decades. Maybe your writing has. Maybe the novelty factor for Apple content is gone. Maybe there's just more competition for the front page now that HN is more mainstream. I just think it's unlikely that PG woke up one day and decided to screw you in particular.
The Simpsons had far too many seasons, but Matt Groening eventually went on to create Futurama. I hope you figure things out.
That “gradual decline” is an artifact of your maths, in which you're gradually changing the weight of recent years.
Consider a sequence with an extreme drop-off: 100, 100, 100, 100, 40. Taking averages of all the numbers, then all but the first, all but the first 2, and so on, yields: 88, 85, 80, 70, 40. That might look like it includes a gradual decline, but clearly there's nothing gradual in the underlying data.
How is it hypocritical to hold the view that some places are intended to be open forums for comments from anyone, and others are not?
Also, by not hosting my own comments, all public commentary on my writing is thus out of my control. I don't get to block comments I don't like here, or on Mastodon, or Twitter/X, or Bluesky. I think that's actually for the better.
You're right — I mean I shouldn't't have used the word 'popularity'. I'd say their positive image though has lost a good deal of its shine since their peak.
I'd say their positive image though has lost a good
deal of its shine since their peak.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I'm also not sure that this would lead to a decrease in engagement. I could very easily see the opposite being true -- more discontent equals more engagement.
Many/most people in tech have to deal with Apple in some capacity even if they're not users or "fans", such as making sites/apps work on Apple platforms.
