HN can be addictive, but it’s different in several relevant ways. It has no notifications. Its user base is relatively small and industry specific. It has no infinite scroll. It is plain text so it doesn’t reward semi-mindless scrolling like media rich social networks. It has a dead simple noprocrast feature that doesn’t play games. It virtually never changes its design, unlike social networks that are constantly tweaking things to increase engagement. In fact the people who run and moderate HN seem pretty intent on slowing down growth, so they can keep it focused and stay on top of moderation. Of course it can still be addictive but it’s in a different category from TikTok etc.

HN is also different in that it's full of serious thoughtful discussion about things that matter. It's certainly addictive, but after I get sucked in I don't feel the same regret as with FB because at least I learned something about a variety of topics and saw what some intelligent people's take was on each

I agree. HN reminds me of the early days of reddit (pre-2010) where STEM people were over-represented compared to other popular websites at the time. The comments here often tend to be informative and insightful, and after catching up on the latest posts, there isn't much of an incentive to stick around. It's just how bulletin boards from the early days used to be, and reminds me of some small forums.

Reddit, on the other hand, has been a difficult addiction for me to break. It's gradually been growing into an alternative social media platform, and every new feature addition to reddit indicates such a transition.

It's still funny that redditors seem to be self-aware of their reddit addiction but somehow perceive Facebook et al to be worse. Different strokes for different folks, but at the end of the day, the mechanisms of addiction are similar regardless of the platform.

Agreed, But FOMO home page content can be still be overwhelming as the rate of change of new content is high. Thankfully HN has 'best stories' feature.

So to reduce the addiction by slowing things down further, I started reading best HN stories on my kindle. Apart from sweet e-paper goodness it also allows me to assimilate the knowledge in comments which we all know is the real gold using clipping.

I've hosted it as a service too[1].

[1] https://hntokindle.com

To add to that, Facebook/Instagram shows approx. one advertisement for every three posts you see. It's a constant barrage on your psyche that I'm happy to avoid on HN.

Good point. Also the ads aren’t targeted, as far as I can tell. And there’s no personalised feed, it’s the same list of links for everyone.

I don't think that's an apt comparison. The difference in degree becomes a difference in kind IMO. HN doesn't send you alerts or notifications that are optimally spaced based on A/B testing. HN isn't personalized per user to maximize each individuals HN time. The HN top doesn't refresh on command and provide a fully new page on each refresh (new topics come up but if you refresh the page every 12 seconds you will see very little change vs any engagement app that always tries to give you something new).

HN can be a time draw, but it's based on a somewhat transparent vote/flag system. Features of other social media sites/apps like A/B testing, personalization, variably spaced notifications, daily digests to draw you in are features that are extraordinarily well designed for our dopamine-reward system.

I've done something similar, cutting Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and all other major social media apps out of my life over the past few years. I would agree that HN is an issue as well, and that I should probably moderate my time on it.

However, I also can't deny that I've genuinely learned a lot from links shared on HN, and I can also attribute nearly my entire push to eliminate social media from my life to HN.

Additionally, HN, like a few other "hobby forums" I belong to, doesn't try to manipulate me to spend more time on the site so it can show me more ads. It only shows me content that other users have posted and shared -- unlike Facebook or Instagram, I don't see an ad every 2-3 posts or comments. That means something to me. Right now, all of those "hobby forums" teach me more about things I care about than they stress me out or piss me off or steal my time. Toward the end, Facebook was just a thing that ate up 10-15 minutes of my time multiple times per day. I can at least point to genuinely interesting facts I've learned from browsing HN.

And most importantly, I mostly do it during work hours anyway :-).

> The feed is algorithmic and designed to surface topics to elicit responses/engagement with the community.

I don't think that's entirely fair. For instance, posts with a large number of comments or a high ratio of comments to votes (I can't remember which) are actually penalized, since that is an indicator that the topic is controversial. The flag feature is another example in that it is a way for users to veto low value posts that might otherwise get high engagement.

hacker News is definitely part of the problem. I've started to use three rules to evaluate habits similar to hacker news. eliminate things that:

1) are unproductive 2) I do not enjoy 3) are pathological (This includes things that float around in your head and create negative thoughts after you do it. coming back to a very negative political argument as an example of this)

I'm not perfect at applying them but it has dramatically improved my life because it has given me a tool to evaluate social media use And I have successfully ramped down use of social media that made my life worse.

Is HN social media? It's media, its sort of social, but I don't know anyone on it personally.

I tend think of social media as non-anonymous (onymous?), because it seems far from a "real" social interaction when it is a faceless (possibly non-human) text account. But could just be me redefining things.

I think HN is not social media, unless you stay long enough to start recogning names in the comment section (BTW, hi TeMPOraL!). It can be used responsibility, but for me it can be very addictive. I try not to engage, yet here you are to witness my failure.

> How much time do you spend on HN?

Too much :)