"HN uses unobtrusive text ads"
HN has ads? I've been on some 2011 and I have never seen them...
Although those aren't ads in the sense that people pay for them?
In terms of paid advertising I guess the whole of HN kind of advertises YC who fund it.
Also, self promotion in comments - often as "shameless plug" - like in any other platform that let you write public text:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
It's almost irrelevant now since Reddit is basically just a gigantic bot farm, but I was always annoyed that Reddit would aggressively remove self promotion in most subs while clearly running major PR campaigns under the guise of organic content.
Hacker News is the opposite and the better for it. If you're openly promoting your work, awesome! If you're doing anything to attempt to manipulate the platform for PR reasons, you can bet you will be punished for it.
I never understood why Reddit, which always tried to give off the "for the little guy" vibes was so rabidly against anyone promoting their own work.
> I never understood why Reddit, which always tried to give off the "for the little guy" vibes was so rabidly against anyone promoting their own work.
Reddit hasn't been 'for the little guy' for a decade, that's why they have to try so hard to give off those vibes.
> Reddit would aggressively remove self promotion in most subs while clearly running major PR campaigns under the guise of organic content.
Yep, this is why they do this. They're removing competition (in the form of ads they weren't paid for) to boost their product (ads they were paid for).
Seriously. It's often taken to absurd levels there. There have been several times when I went to Reddit answer a question about my own project that someone was asking, and my comment got downvoted or moderated away for self-promotion even though I was just answering the question. Ironically, omitting a disclaimer about it being my project will typically let the comments slide by, but that seems like the opposite of what you want. I prefer people to declare their biases up front so that I can evaluate their statement based on That context and on its merits. I personally love it when someone comments on something that they do.
I think hn handles this perfectly. In my opinion. If the comment is a shameless plug that adds no value, it will get downvoted quite quickly. If it's adding value to the conversation, and (usually) as long as the commenter isn't was pretending not to be integrated, it stands.
You didn't notice they were ads.
Never realized there were stories i couldn't comment.
Then again, Im not in CS so the job by boards posts are never interesting to me
Usually it's just "so and so is hiring" (not to be confused with the who wants to be hired threads) weaved in to look like just another submission
I always thought those were a feature. I figured they were paid recruitment, they also seemed to be relevant to most of the community here, win win!