Ask HN: Where are the best online gathering places for humans?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44967243

by jMyles • 11 months ago

10 19 11 months ago

news.ycombinator.com

Where are the best online spaces where humanity is attested in a decentralized way, using web-of-trust or something similar?

haebom• 11 months ago

Personally, I think it's x or Reddit. Of course, there are many bots too.

shortrounddev23• 11 months ago

I can't think of a worse website to talk to people on than Twitter these days

al_borland• 11 months ago

I went on X today for the first time in a long time. I mentioned something in a thread about an experience a fried had that was relevant to the parent post. Someone (who claimed to be the CTO of some company in his bio), called me a liar, then proceeded to call me and the friend I mentioned a bunch of derogatory names, after I attempted to expand on and clarify things based on his earlier accusations.

Does Reddit still ban people for having discussions in good faith, if they think you’re on the wrong side of the group-think? That was my fate there.

Between the culture and the bots, both of those sites are pretty bad. AI has just made it worse.

muzani2• 11 months ago

X is the 4chan of 2025. Porn, politics, racism, "hot takes", but with more celebrities and less anonymity. It's a little worse because people think they can make money dunking on others.

Reddit's group think can be a little weird. There was a phase where r/openai was full of OpenAI haters. r/writers was full of people who would dunk on Stephen King and JK Rowling. r/cooking was full of people who think that cheap wine should be used for cooking. That was my frustration with reddit. At least with HN, only half of the community hates AI and NFT.

hiAndrewQuinn• 11 months ago

X gets my vote, but I have had outsized positive experiences from it (including getting married and a few job offers). It isn't a platform for the faint of heart. You have to commit to posting things other people actually regularly find interesting on there to get the most out of it, which is simply not a bar most people pass. Even then can take a few months before you start to find your footing.

jMyles2• 11 months ago

Reddit in particular feels totally lost. The overwhelming majority of posts and especially comments are milquetoast, LLM-feeling, uninsightful, centrist drivel.

It's so loud that it's easy to forget that real humans crave real interactions and learning.

shortrounddev23• 11 months ago

IRC feels more authentic than discord to me

t0duf0du• 11 months ago

What are some good IRCs? Can you please tell me?

shortrounddev23• 11 months ago

libera.chat is probably the biggest. Rizon is the unofficial home of various 4chan affiliated IRC channels.

krapp2• 11 months ago

The fediverse. Mastodon is good if you curate properly. Lemmy might also be good but I don't follow it as much.

nis0s2• 11 months ago

I’d just caution that a lot of the Fediverse is heavily Marxist-Leninist. If that’s for you, go for it.

krapp2• 11 months ago

I'd say it's far more generally leftist than Marxist-Leninist, although there are a lot of card-carrying Marxists and communists around. I just mute the most exasperating of the lot who post thirst traps of Castro and gas up BRICS.

muzani2• 11 months ago

reminds me of this: https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1j5kbeb/nazi_bar/

bilsbie• 11 months ago

Bitchat might take off one day. I keep checking and no one is on yet.

zywoo2• 11 months ago

For me, if you can tolerate a more blue-leaning political climate, Bluesky feels better than X. It may not explode as fast, but the long-tail effect is real. Anonymity is also a bit stronger there.

alecsm• 11 months ago

Blue leaning?

I wouldn't mind that. The problem there is that every topic is mixed with politics and it drains me. I'm already bombarded with political stuff from every angle and when I want to talk about tech I don't want more politics into it.

In that regard even X is better. I can keep it pretty clean by following few people and not looking at the For you page.

zywoo2• 11 months ago

Haha, true, but I’m really interested in political theory and philosophy. So occasionally when I come across some very in-depth original content on Bluesky, it feels great. I’ve even made some friends there with whom I can have long-term conversations, for example, discussions on Bayesianism, rationalism and empiricism, as well as Spinoza’s Ethics. I’m not really interested in topics about the Democrats or Republicans, Biden or Trump.

jMyles2• 11 months ago

I like Bluesky, but it feels just as overrun by bots and LLMs as X.

Ask HN: Where are the best online gathering places for humans?

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