nathan_compton 5 hours ago

Two clicks into this and I say someone posting "Killing n** (free speech)" from a poster named "N*** killer".

I am, in fact, pro free speech. But this is a bad look. I'm not even saying this is a problem with subreply. It is some other kind of problem. A problem with a subset of people who like free speech or something? I don't get it.

  • perching_aix an hour ago

    It is a bad look, but it makes sense to me.

    For what it's worth, right now at least, most thoughts and opinions people have in the English speaking world can be expressed just fine without it getting moderated out, despite what some would claim. And so those who seek out platforms where they won't get moderated will primarily be folks who would get otherwise moderated out elsewhere. One can also refer to cryptocurrencies and Tor for a parallel.

  • shayway 5 hours ago

    It's worth pointing out that the post in question was made in the past half hour amidst the wave of activity from HN. Not to say your point isn't valid, but I think this is more an example of trolls who will say anything and everything to cause anger and insult; it's not representative of those who believe in free speech, or the site itself for that matter.

    • averageRoyalty 5 hours ago

      But that example has played out on every social media website, forum, etc once hitting critical mass. It's a bigger problem in society yes, but it's not just trolls. Trolls are the least harmful of the groups of people who will scream racial epithets online.

    • givemeethekeys 5 hours ago

      Maybe it is a bot by other competing social networks.

      Such trolling hurts new businesses a lot more than old ones.

  • giancarlostoro 4 hours ago

    For some people if you can say the most extreme things, then you can say anything else, including things that are nowhere near as bad as this but are banned in other platforms.

    I have admined what I consider free speech friendly communities in the past (think forums), people always join and ruin it for everyone else.

  • ta8645 an hour ago

    We see much worse than that all the time. We go to movies that portray horror, torture, murder, depravity, slavery, etc. There are books that contain all those. There are tattoos on people that depict scenes of death and satanism. We put these in their proper place and tolerate them, many people even enjoy them. There are some efforts to keep them out of the public eye and away from children, but it's quite easy to see incidental advertisements, posters, or discussions of all of them.

    We should treat social media the same way. There should be a way to filter what you don't want to see, that's your choice. But we shouldn't try to stamp out people saying what they want, or decide what other people should filter for themselves.

    Most people who say things like you quoted, aren't killers, i'd guess that most of them aren't even racist. A good fraction of them are just immature, or social outcasts, that are desperate to get a rise out of people. If we could all turn down our reactivity, there'd be less of a draw, for those troublemakers to spew their nonsense.

    What we should be the most on guard against, are the unintended consequences of trying to censor this stuff. People shouldn't have their political and social voices limited, just because a relatively few people are disruptive like this.

  • latexr 5 hours ago

    > I am, in fact, pro free speech.

    You can be pro free speech and still not condone hate speech, or libel, or doxxing, or a myriad of other problems.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

    Free speech doesn’t mean you can say literally anything in literally any context. Not, not even in the “land of the free”.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...

    Additionally, XKCD reminds:

    https://xkcd.com/1357/

    > A problem with a subset of people who like free speech or something? I don't get it.

    I don’t think those people particularly care about free speech, they just want to be able to say whatever they want with no repercussions. The more of a “free speech absolutist” they claim to be, usually the worse they are. It’s a common pattern to see those same individuals clamour for free speech in one post and then in another call for banning books or try to silence someone else.

    • perching_aix an hour ago

      The extreme and persistent refusal of people en-masse over the years to concede to this, and to insist with absolute certainty that any amount of filtering at all is straight up censorship and so they're now being repressed, has successfully made me give up on the idea of being "pro free speech". I sometimes wonder if that was the goal, both in the political sense, but also in the sarcastic counterexample sense.

    • nine_k 5 hours ago

      > want to be able to say whatever they want with no repercussions

      Rather, they want to be able to say anything to annoy people as much as possible, for the kicks.

      Verily, it's important to be able to say annoying things: try speaking about atheism or a different religion in a devout crowd (capitalism among the "left", climate change among the "right", etc). But the intention is important. The intention of trolls is to enjoy other people's discomfort, not to voice an important idea.

      Unfortunately, this is very hard to formalize.

  • reactordev 3 hours ago

    When your speech has no apparent consequences people tend to say the most obscene things because in their mind it’s been taboo for so long. The problem is that is an extreme dopamine rush and if not checked, can cause you to seek that reward by opening your mouth a second time. (Or typing your thoughts on social media).

  • hexage1814 3 hours ago

    > I am, in fact, pro free speech

    Sure you are...

bluerooibos 4 hours ago

Cool! I'd say the current UI would greatly benefit from some UX enhancements.

At first glance, the page just looks like a wall of text. Very little contrast/hierarchy difference between author names and post titles etc so it's difficult to distinguish between what the content is. Spacing between content would help too.

PaulHoule 8 hours ago

Gotta say that (1) images greatly improve engagement on things like Mastodon and Bluesky and (2) I have the most fun on those platforms sharing photos that I took.

  • mbirth 7 hours ago

    Yeah, this reminds me of old Reddit where people resorted to imgur and other image hosts before they introduced their own photo upload feature.

    • athenot 2 hours ago

      Before Facebook bought Instagram, the later was the main way people posted images on Twitter, since it was text-only at the time.

    • PokemonNoGo 7 hours ago

      Is that bad? Resorting to a dedicated party for rich content? I enjoyed reddit more when it was like that honestly. Business wise it is the wrong decision though.

      • mbirth 5 hours ago

        It's bad in that the media is completely disconnected from the posts. If the media provider you chose goes down, nobody will be able to see the stuff you've posted anymore. If that subreply server you're using gets taken down, you'll have lots of orphaned stuff on that media upload website.

  • throwaway81523 5 hours ago

    I've never used Mastodon of Bluesky and I hate Twitter. I do feel pretty engaged with HN, and it is text-only. I'm not sure what makes "social media" different from a discussion board though, so I don't know whether HN counts. I do remember that github used to call itself social coding, which was one factor making me want to stay away from it.

    • latexr 5 hours ago

      HN has (or is missing, depending on your point of view) a number of features integral to (other?) social networks. Being text-only is one, but not having notifications for replies is a big one. Also no “boosts”, “reshares”, “follows”, “blocks”, …

      • throwaway81523 4 hours ago

        Yeah for Usenet I use gnus, which keeps track of which posts I have already seen. It doesn't have notifications and I don't miss them, as long as I can see right away where the new posts are. I don't know what reshares are. Gnus does have a way to ignore specific posters or topics and I do use that. Every time I mull the idea of writing another forum poster, I come back to the realization that Usenet already does everything needed (at least on the backend), and has done so since the 1980s. A better NNTP to web gateway is all it could really use, for those who want to read with browsers.

  • chistev 8 hours ago

    But there are no images here

    • PaulHoule 6 hours ago

      ... and what I post to Mastodon/Bluesky is different from what I post to HN

      https://mastodon.social/@UP8

      For instance, I post links to phys.org a lot more and I'm less likely to post a link to the paper because (1) Mastodon can't extract images out of the latter and (2) I get more replies like "this is over my head" from Mastodonsters whereas I think most of you might think you'd look stupid if you said something like that. On the other hand I rarely post links to The Guardian to Mastodon because it can't extract images from Guardian articles.

      Bonus: if you look right now you'll see the user interface that I use to post to HN! [1]

      [1] permalink that documents the mysterious YOShInOn: https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114887102728039235

      • latexr 5 hours ago

        > I get more replies like "this is over my head" from Mastodonsters whereas I think most of you might think you'd look stupid if you said something like that.

        Not sure that’s the reason. Or at least all of it. HN tends to value substantive posts and someone just saying “I don’t understand this” doesn’t add to the discussion and would likely be downvoted. On the other hand, I have seen people here say they don’t understand specific bits of a post. Those are actionable and advance the discussion, and tend to be upvoted and get replies.

    • ramon156 8 hours ago

      ... hence the comment

    • latchkey 7 hours ago

      I've been keeping a list of features to build into a HN browser extension for years now and this is one of the top items on my list. One of these days I'll get around to it.

      • chistev 7 hours ago

        I wasn't complaining. I love that HN is text only.

giancarlostoro 3 hours ago

I have thought about making something similar, text only social media. The focus should be on written content, not so much video, and images. I also considered how to monetize / do ads correctly, maybe a slightly different font.

diath 8 hours ago

You probably want to pin requirements to specific versions of the libraries.

dsmurrell 4 hours ago

Was going to register but this stopped me...

"Password needs a lowercase letter"

Can you use entropy based password complexity measures please.

wenbin 2 hours ago

missed the good old days of telnet bbs & newsgroup :)

Sirikon 7 hours ago

Trendiest post is from the developer saying "Mastodon is dead", four weeks ago, 12 replies.

Sure bud.

  • loloquwowndueo 6 hours ago

    You make it sound like they claim subreply is the thing that might have killed mastodon. The full post is:

    Mastodon is dead. Most people have migrated to Bluesky or Threads.

    • cyberge99 6 hours ago

      Thank you for the context. It’s important and often overlooked.