Sorry for the self-reference outside of a moderation context, but I wrote what turned into an entire essay about this last night: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. It's about how this plays out specifically on HN.

Short version: it's because this place is less divisive that it feels more divisive. HN is probably the least divisive community of its size and scope on the internet (if there are others, I'd like to know which they are), and precisely because of this, many people feel that it's among the most divisive. The solution to the paradox is that HN is the rare case of a large(ish) community that keeps itself in one piece instead of breaking into shards or silos. If that's true, then although we haven't yet realized it, the HN community is on the leading edge of the opportunity to learn to be different with one another, at least on the internet.

The thing is that HN is essentially run like singapore - a benign-seeming authoritarian dictatorship that shuts down conflicts early and is also relatively small and self-contained. One thing that doesn't get measured in this analysis is the number of people who leave because they find that this gives rise to a somewhat toxic environment, as malign actors can make hurtful remarks but complaints about them are often suppressed. Of course, it tends to average out over time and people of opposite political persuasions may both feel their views are somewhat suppressed, but this largely reactive approach is easily gamed as long as its done patiently.

This is why I like HN. I am always challenged with different points of view on here, and in a non-argumentative way. It's just a rational discussion. Often I will see something on FB or Twitter that is outrageous to me (by design), but when I look it up on HN and find some discussion on the details, truth is often more sane than it seems...

One of my theories about the success of HN is that we are grouped together based on one set of topics (on which we largely agree), but we discuss other topics over which we are just as divided as the general public.

I believe there is an anchoring effect -- if you are just in a discussion where someone helps you understand the RISC-V memory model, it feels wrong to go into another thread on the same site and unload a string of epithets on someone who feels differently than you do about how doctors should get paid.

First of all, less divisive environment means you interact with people of different opinions which means that few interactions will be with exactly like-minded people.

Environments where all people tend to think exactly the same are typically extremist in some way, resulting from some kind of polarization process that eliminates people that don't express opinion at the extreme of spectrum. They are either removed forcibly or remove themselves when they get dissatisfied.

One way HN stays away from this polarization process is because of the discussion topics and the kind of person that typically enjoys these discussions. Staying away from mainstream politics, religion, etc. and focusing mainly on technological trivia means people of very different opinions can stay civilized discussing non-divisive topics.

Also it helps that extremist and uncivilized opinions tend to be quickly suppressed by the community thanks to vote-supported tradition. I have been reading HN from very close to start (even though I have created the account much further). I think the first users were much more VC/development oriented and as new users were coming they tend to observe and conform to the tradition.

(I red your piece. I think I figured it out. The users actually select themselves on HN though in a different way. The people who can't cope with diverse community can't find place for themselves, because there is no way to block diverse opinion, and in effect remove themselves from here and this is what allows HN to survive. The initial conditions were people who actually invited diverse opinion which allowed this equilibrium).

I agree with you but this is an incredibly hard problem to solve. How are you going to get your friend to engage with videos that are in direct opposition to her world views? Recommendations are based on what she actually clicks on, how long she actually watches the videos, etc.

And from the business perspective, they're trying to reduce the likelihood that your friend abandons their platform and goes to another one that she feels is more "built for her".

A start would be to recognize that businesses are not allowed to exploit this aspect of human nature because the harm is too great to justify business opportunity.

We need to regulate this industry very badly

It's easy to solve. FB gets to either be a platform for content or a curator for content. They can't be both because that would be a conflict of interest.

Then what's the business model? Who pays for all of it?

I'm not defending a specific approach or solution, but just pointing out that at this point, FB is a huge entrenched business that makes a lot of money on the status quo, and so convincing them to change "for the better" is barking up the wrong tree until "for the better" means "more profitable".

Splitting the platform and curation means the platform needs a revenue stream. If the curator pays the platform, then all you're doing is shifting the conflict up a notch, not solving it.

I think that is not quite right, but the distinction is subtle. The algorithm selects the content that you are most likely to be engaged with. For most people likely that is the filter bubble, and seeing only what they agree with. But for some folks, they actively like to have debates (or troll one another) and see more content they will not agree with, because what they don't agree with gets more engagement. The intent is to keep you engaged and active as long as possible on the site, and feed whatever drives that behavior.

This isn't necessarily bad all the time. But when content is used to form opinions on real world things that actually Matter, it definitely becomes a problem.

In other words, Steam, please filter games by my engagement in previous games I've played. News organizations, please don't filter news by my engagement in previous news.

Facebook's problem is it acts in two worlds: keeping up with your friends, and learning important information. If all you did was keep up with your friends' lives, filtering content by engagement is kind of meh.

Same with youtube. I mostly spend all my time on there watching technical talks and video game related stuff. It's pure entertainment. So filtering content is fine. But if I also used it to get my news, you start to run into problems.

That is a really annoying issue I have with YouTube.

I occasionally watch some of the Joe Rogan podcast videos when he has a guest I'm interested in. I swear, as soon as I watch one JRE video, I am suddenly inundated with suggestions for videos with really click-baity and highly politicized topics.

I've actually gotten to the point where I actively avoid videos that I want to watch because I know what kind of a response YouTube will have. Either that or I open them in incognito mode. It's a shame. I wish I could just explicitly define my interests rather than YT trying to guess what I want to watch.

Cynically, very few platforms want you to make your own decisions.

This is the exact same behavior I have noticed from YouTube as well. I miss the "old" YouTube around 2011, when it was a terrific place to discover new and interesting videos. If I watched a video on mountain biking, let's say, then the list of suggested videos all revolved around that topic. But in today's YouTube, the suggested content for the same mountain biking video is all unrelated, often extremely polarizing, political content. I actually can NO LONGER discover new interesting content on YouTube. Like you say, it automatically categorizes you based on the very first few videos and that's all you see from there on out. That is why I have now configured my browser to block all cookies from YouTube. I'm annoyed that I can no longer enjoy YouTube logged in, but at least now I feel like I've gotten back that "old" YouTube of what it once was. It's a whole lot less polarizing now, I feel much better as a result of it, and the suggestions are significantly improved.

Exactly. I remember clicking on homepage to get selection of new, interesting videos. Now I just get exactly the same every time I click. Useless. I would like to discover new topics not get rehash of same ones.

In the case of Facebook they absolutely do not try to please me. They quite literally tries to do the exact opposite of everything I would like from my feed.

Chronological with the ability to easily filter who I see, and who I post to. On each point capabilities has either been removed, hidden, or made worse in some other creative way.

Adding insult to injury, having to periodically figure out where they've now hidden the save button for events, or some other feature they don't want me to use is always a 'fun' exercise.

It doesn't address all of those, but if you visit https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions it looks like it's still just a reverse chronological list of videos from your subscriptions.

What really scares me is how many people I know who acknowledge that platforms like Facebook and YouTube are designed to create echo chambers which tend to distort people's opinions and perceptions towards extremes... but still actively engage with them without taking any precautions. They know it's bad for them, but they keep going back for more.

Having awareness probably means they can engage in a meaningful way. Some degree of maturity and critical thought are required to dam up invaluable media. It's something akin to junk food; junk media.

> The problem really is platforms that give people content to please them.

But it doesn't please them -- study after study shows a high correlation between depression and anxiety and social media use.

Plenty of things don't cure depression. Doesn't make them bad.

Same goes for non-political content. I often have to log out of youtube to find something new and interesting (even though I have hundreds of subscriptions).