It's certainly possible there's a backend flag on the site.
But from the comments I see on Reddit, I suspect there may be a simpler explanation: a lot of people for some reason really dislike John Gruber and view him as someone who slavishly praises Apple.
I'm a big John Gruber fan, and I don't think this is true in the slightest. I think he thinks carefully, forms his own opinions, and is very willing to intensely criticize Apple as evidenced by his recent article on the State of Cupertino.
But this means his pro and con opinions don't match typical opinions and this makes him polarizing. And hence some people will flag his articles reflexively or post reflexive dismissals. And Hacker News is heavily weighted to downrank polarizing articles.
I've seen this same pattern happen with other topics where an article doesn't match the zeitgeist, even it the article itself is not flamebait. I think the Something Rotten in the State of Cupertino should have been at the top of Hacker News.
But overall the algorithm has kept HN an interesting place. Any good moderation policy has side effects and tradeoffs.
Dang would be the one to know, but it looks to me there's an innocuous explanation here. As for transparency, it's always frustrating to have it. But transparency in algo's invites gaming of those same algo's (and I don't mean by John). So I wouldn't expect the HN modteam to publish details about their algo.
Edit: since I posted this, the article was flagged. Which I think may support the thesis. I will say the mod team might consider a vouch feature for articles the way one exists for users/comments. I think it ought to take a lot of vouching to counteract flags, but there are clearly articles where this is warranted. The OPSec breach this week was one of them (and it was restored).
I don't see how a blog post complaining about vote counts is any more interesting than a comment complaining about vote counts. But ok, I'll bite. The articles are not ranked well because they're not interesting or useful.
The one DF article I remember seeing recently is "Why Can’t We Screenshot Frames From DRM-Protected Video on Apple Devices?" and it seemed like just a fluffy post without any technical info and without any research, just an excuse to dog on other operating systems.
Why do some setups allow screenshots and some don't? His post starts with "I’m not entirely sure" and doesn't get better from there. You can google "what is widevine" and get better info. In reality, different browsers and different OS's are certified to different Widevine levels, depending on whether the content goes through a sufficiently protected hardware path. But in Gruber's world, "streaming services somehow don’t care about what Windows users do" (spoiler alert, they obviously do), and you can take screenshots on Windows because "Windows uses a less sophisticated imaging pipeline" (naturally, because it wasn't created by the sophisticated Steve Jobs!)
These posts are the tabloids of the tech world, and uninteresting unless you need a source to cite to win an argument about why your favorite computer company is morally superior to all the other computer companies.
I would like to see more DF on HN. The something rotten in Cupertino was a shattering post—people in my circle who do not read DF were discussing and sending it around, and I work at a place where so many dang people read HN. So I agree with Gruber’s concern.
It's well documented that user flags affect the ranking of stories even before stories are marked as [flagged]. While flagging certainly contributes to the lack of discussion on your articles, I believe that the main reason is that, for the most part, the Hacker News audience is less interested in your take than it used to be.
Case in point: In recent months, a lot of recent Trump/Elon posts have been flagged and disappeared from the front page, but still managed to garner hundreds of points and comments. My assumption is that a significant portion of users use hn.algolia.com, circumventing the flagging algorithm. Personally, I've recently found myself using hn.algolia.com (filtering for top stories in the last 24h) more often than news.ycombinator.com.
If your issue was purely flagging-related, your articles should be able to generate engagement. That's why I'm saying I think there is a lack of interest.
Personally, while I appreciate your work, it's become less interesting to me over time. The value of your blog to me is mainly around getting a perspective into how a die-hard Apple fan would think about a certain topic. This was fun in the period from 2007 until some point in the mid-2010s, when smartphones were revolutionary and the iPhone vs. Android ecosystem battle was still relevant. But ever since phones converged into commodities, it just stopped being interesting. No one is emotionally invested in their choice of phone anymore.
Don't take my word for it. Compare the Google Trends for MacRumors [0] and Daring Fireball [1]. Both faced a sharp decline starting in the mid-2010s. It's not a surprise that engagement on Hacker News would mirror those trends.
It’s not just Gruber. As both a medium-high HN karma person and a Gruber fan I can say there is a definite reduction in the overall quality of discourse around Apple news versus general topics on HN. Much more knee jerk reactions.
I theorize this is due to the overall startup versus incumbents focus as well as the hacker ethos of being opposed to more buttoned up closed systems meant for the general public. Like for example recent posts on EU regulation of Apple get generally favorable reactions and little analysis of actual consumer experience impact, of which Gruber is more keenly analytical.
E.g. most of us on HN would generally appreciate having opt-in side loading and whatnot onto our Apple devices, like macOS. So Gruber just sounds like some kind of apologist when he says this would hurt consumers in the large. We more advanced hacker types are quick to say PEBKAC.
But it’s a shame because his analysis actually offers really good insight in how to build successful consumer products the Apple way.
Would love to hear from HN on why such an otherwise incredible popular site is so often blacklisted or censored vs what is allowed. Why not let users vote instead like other news? Or if truly not being censored bring receipts on what’s happening?
The shift from past popularity to apparent suppression is interesting, but without concrete proof, it remains speculation. Still, the frustration about opaque moderation resonates with me.
I visit daringfireball relatively regularly, and enjoy many of Gruber's takes. I know he's an Apple shill -- let's be honest and get that out of the way -- and his occasional softball criticizing some product or other doesn't change that, so I visit with a "let's see what the Apple guy thinks" angle.
But let's be real - it's a hot takes/opinions site. It's basically the junk food of content. The world is absolutely awash in "My opinion" kind of blog entries like DF and they generally do extremely poorly on here, for good reason. There will be nothing technically revelatory in anything written there. Nothing that will really change anything. It's an Apple guy with opinions about stuff. For instance that 3.5" was the "sweet spot" for smartphone screen sizes, coincidentally when Apple's smartphones only had 3.5" screen sizes.
Again, I still read it and sometimes enjoy it -- at least when he isn't on his bizarre Mark Gurman and/or Bloomberg "they are my nemesis" nonsense, which absolutely no one cares about but him.
I bet flags weigh more from high karma users. It seems likely that there is a small, dedicated band of anti-DF users with high karma who flag everything.
It probably only takes a few people with enough karma to kill a post, which is consistent with the fact that some posts have a reasonable half life. I don’t think it’s a formal gray list.
While I avoid reading DF whenever possible personally, I'd never flag posts.
I am sure only the moderators have visibility into what's going on here. I would hazard a guess that the user base of HN itself has changed in recent years. It's probably no accident that Gruber points out the ranking shifts in 2021 - a lot of things shifted 2020/2021 due to downstream pandemic impacts.
It's hard to speculate without mod-level visibility though. I'd love for them to weigh in.
There are many "why is this flagged comments" even by some old users who have been here a long time.
If you search or view dang's comments you can see multiple explanations on why and how posts are flagged.
Many people will flag if they think a submission will cause flame. And many people will flag if they see most comments are not constructive and are just complaining about comments. It doesn't make interesting reading. For what it's worth I came here via new comments and the submission was already flagged, so this is for whoever is left!
Check out the usual guidelines:
"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." and remember that people like interesting things. Keep this a good interesting place.
Additionally there seems to be an increasing paranoid-like, conspiratorial, us vs them group mentality and accusation of brigading and censorship. This type of thinking are thought terminations and can morally hurt oneself. They don't encourage people to think of others as other people like themselves but encourages people to see more enemies around them and leads to dead end conclusions and prejudice.
This is weird. I know that there is a certain anti-Apple sentiment among many HN users (and I know my own posts get little traction here because of the domain name-or because of my employer…), but the gap here feels much wider.
Does hackernews publish its account/site weighting? If not, why not?
From the FAQ:
> Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.
People on HN are human beings, and there are definitely Apple tribes and non-Apple tribes.
Gruber also posts more now than in recent memory political observations and commentary. As he's gotten older his blog has expanded beyond just the Apple scene.
While I've always felt DF got insta-banned by fanbois of other tribes regardless of the content of his posts (which should be discouraged here in some way imo) it's quite possible he's got folks on The Other Aisle that insta-flag him simply because they don't like his political views.
If that's what's happening, or it's due to a decades-long disagreement with his taste and views regardless of the posts being submitted, that feels like unwarranted censorship that goes against the grain of HN's guidelines.
Maybe it’s because Apple is rarely doing anything interesting these days and an unidimensional pundit's excruciatingly detailed analysis of that - is even less interesting.
Add to that a writing style that is often biased, arrogant and inflammatory and you get even less interesting comments on this site.
Exactly the same for Tim Bray, btw - except for Android stuff.
There used to be a time when this stuff was hot, people took sides and breathlessly read anything they could find about the new stuff being released. That time has passed. We stopped caring.
The anger reading the comments here from the folks who don't like DF/Apple is practically palpable, and that's obviously the reason the articles get flagged.
I'm not sure where all that anger comes from (e.g., there isn't any company I've ever been as angry about as some of the commenters on this thread are). I suspect the response I'd get if I asked would be Apple did this or that, but personally, if I didn't like this or that I'd just buy a product from a different company and go about my day. I don't get hanging on to all that anger.
(And frankly, I'd love if someone did what DF does for other platforms, I like hearing from fans of products and platforms what they see in them.)
1. The HN audience’s preferences have changed over time
2. There’s way more competition – the amount of great content to share and discuss has increased a lot
3. Gruber apparently does not write as much or as well as he did a decade or so ago (at least according to many Daring Fireball readers I know)
4. Yes, many readers don’t like him, but I would also say that many readers, especially younger ones, simply don’t care about him (related to point number 1)
5. Related to all above, Gruber’s influence and relevance in tech debates have probably declined
I always come via the algolia page to hackernews. Just get the most popular news in the last 24h: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=last24h
It looks like flagging doesn't affect the ranking there as long as it gained some traffic before that.
I really don't see what's the issue here. Some people don't like Apple.
Also:
> Initial reviews of the much-anticipated iPhone X appeared on October 31, but I’d only had the phone for 24 hours when the embargo dropped
Having Apple hardware before official launch (when review embargo is still on) tells me that the author will never publish bad press for apple, and is not to be trusted on reviewing Apple hardware.
Apple is know for stopping shipping pre-release hardware to people that are honest in their review and that might call out questionable choice.
The guy from unbox therapy said this pretty explicitly: when he started questioning apple's hardware design choices they stopped inviting them to their events and stopped sending them pre-release items.
You can see something similar in mkbhd's videos where he's pretty much constantly walking on thin ice. He says and doesn't say stuff. My gut feeling regarding him is that he can get away with some of that because of his large audience.
I have no idea if DF is being "suppressed" or not, but I do know that I see DF articles appearing on HN frequently, so it doesn't feel like it. I have almost no interest in things Apple so rarely read them, but I see them a lot.
I thought dang said once that any Apple article gets downranked automatically … and since Gruber predominately writes about Apple, his articles are probably experiencing that.
But I can’t seem to find that comment here on HN that references how Apple articles get downranked.
Most posts that I see from Daring Fireball remind me of ribbonfarm's "Internet of Beefs."
It would be difficult to lean in harder than this one does. For me, this is a sign to tune out. Not above drama, but I prefer it in media that activate a wider range of emotions.
You mean to tell me hackers are willing to astroturf? I am pretty sure SV angels sent emails to Portco’s telling them how to vote... not about content but in statewide elections. Some times the hive mind needs to think differently.
As someone who's been reading Daring Fireball since 2004 and considers themselves an Apple fan, I think the algorithm is working exactly as intended if it's designed to limit intellectually dishonest content.
Gruber has built a career on a predictable pattern: vociferously defend Apple's every decision (even contradicting his own previous positions when Apple changes course), construct elaborate post-rationalizations for their missteps, while simultaneously maintaining meticulous, years-long grudges against anyone who makes incorrect predictions about Apple.
There's a stark difference between having perspective as an enthusiast and being a reflexive apologist. The "Something Rotten in Cupertino" piece is the exception that proves the rule - a rare deviation that doesn't erase the pattern of selective criticism that's defined his work for years.
What's particularly frustrating is the pretense of even-handedness. I'd respect the work more if it were openly presented as Apple advocacy rather than positioned as independent analysis. The community's collective flagging behavior isn't "censorship" - it's quality control from readers who've recognized this pattern.
HN's algorithm isn't suppressing contrarian viewpoints - it's responding to content that consistently fails to meet the intellectual honesty this community values.
A handful of 100+ comment/upvote submissions in the past month or so alone is not "afraid to discuss". That's hundreds or thousands of eyeballs. And your hot topics might also not be that unique so discussion is happening on other source articles at the same time. Not everything is going to be that interesting all the time. And stuff moves pretty fast around here. Come on now.
This is #9 on the active page but nonexistent on news. I get a sense that active has more interesting content these days. I think folks are way more sensitive this year and react with downvotes and active shows that content.
In some sense I think having an open mind and partaking in active discussions rather than just popular ones that please everyone is a better path forwards.
Likely Occam’s razor here. The answer is simple enough that Gruber even states it in his blog, writing:
> But if you look at the last four years, from 2021 through 2025, Daring Fireball ranks #72.
> Maybe I’ve lost my fastball, and I just don’t write so good no more. Or maybe it’s not me, but the Hacker News audience that has changed in recent years.
The last four years are the outlier to his popularity on HN, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that DF posted a lot of politically-charged takes during this timeframe, including opinions about covid, vax mandates, Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, Elon, and Trump.
I suspect his takes frustrated many of his long-term readers, leading to less sharing and more flagging on HN - maybe by users with more influence - coupled with the site’s opaque algorithms/weightings picking up on the negative sentiment.
He leaves out the possibility of a voting ring. I am 90% certain several such rings exist, or have existed. I believe some rings are topical, some are user ID based, some are site based.
It is not "discussion" he is after but traffic to his website, what happens when HN submissions reach the front page and attract the most comments, so he can profit. He wants a large audience to attract sponsors.
He is a horrible apple shill, but he does have great insight and articulate reasoning on why things are the way they are. We should figure out where the block is and remove it.
I used to read DF semi regularly, like many others I didn’t always agree with the opinions but broadly I appreciated the thought and effort that went into them.
I stopped abruptly when posts and tweets became (to me) shockingly pro Israel and excused/justified/diminished the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
I understand the situation in Israel is complicated, and there is a strong relationship between the US and Israel, but as a citizen of a former occupied nation I can not stomach any attempts to rationalize the genocide happening in Palestine.
I find the whole thing funny. There's not so much secret sauce going on here as much as you might think. I've been reading Daring Fireball for a long time but I think anytime you make this suggestion the automatic response is to think there is some shady cabal behind the scenes and that's just conspiracy theory stuff. Anytime someone makes a meta post questioning how HN ranks articles it almost always gets flagged because it's not really on topic.
I started reading DF when I was a college student, probably in 2002 or 2003. I listened to every iteration of The Talk Show that I can remember --- both runs with your former host, and the current edition from the very first episode. When I moved to Los Angeles and had no friends and felt lonely as hell all the time, I used to put on the keyboard episode of The Talk Show to give me something pleasant to fall asleep to.
But John, your cheerleading for Israel's genocide --- man. Way before the election of the current cheerleader-in-chief for that effort, you were ahead of the game.
You said that students who protested this genocide should be expelled from college (you've got a friend in the White House now, John!):
> These students should be expelled from college, not placated.
And, most sickening of all, you cheered the indiscriminate pager attack that maimed children, which your friend in the White House has now got a golden pager memorializing:
> This whole operation sounds like it would make for a great movie.
I could go on, but the effect was heartbreaking. My old friend, the voice in my little Pasadena apartment all those years ago, clapping for the maiming of children and howling for the expulsion of students who disagree with him? Who was this guy? Who is this guy? Had I read him wrong the whole time? Had I changed --- would I have loved those blown-up Lebanese kids back in 2002, and now I'd gone soft? I don't know. But if I'd visited DF for the first time in 2003 and found content calling for the expulsion of Iraq War protesters, I don't think I'd have made a second visit.
> What bothers me isn’t so much that Daring Fireball is shitlisted at Hacker News — even though I really did enjoy reading the commentary on my posts back when they regularly surfaced there, and still do when one slips through the cracks.
Did DF ever allow comments on its own website? I vaguely remember gruber once saying: “If you want to comment on my blog, write your own blog.”
> What bothers me is that it’s unexplained. Which, ultimately, seems not so much censorial as just cowardly.
Moderation on HN is probably the most transparent you’ll find anywhere aside from Wikipedia, and HN is better than WP in terms of unbiased moderation. Dang and team have a stellar reputation and the idea that they’re covertly blacklisitng a personal blog is really silly.
OP’s submissions are likely not popular because of a mixture of them being not that interesting or useful and also contentious. Contentious submissions get massively reduced in visibility automatically. And stuff like an iPhone review significantly after other mainstream reviews is just not that interesting.
The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss
(daringfireball.net)479 points by jgruber 27 March 2025 | 275 comments
Comments
From first glance there's still some decent traffic on Daring Fireball submissions, even inside the times Gruber asserts deadweighting.
But from the comments I see on Reddit, I suspect there may be a simpler explanation: a lot of people for some reason really dislike John Gruber and view him as someone who slavishly praises Apple.
I'm a big John Gruber fan, and I don't think this is true in the slightest. I think he thinks carefully, forms his own opinions, and is very willing to intensely criticize Apple as evidenced by his recent article on the State of Cupertino.
But this means his pro and con opinions don't match typical opinions and this makes him polarizing. And hence some people will flag his articles reflexively or post reflexive dismissals. And Hacker News is heavily weighted to downrank polarizing articles.
I've seen this same pattern happen with other topics where an article doesn't match the zeitgeist, even it the article itself is not flamebait. I think the Something Rotten in the State of Cupertino should have been at the top of Hacker News.
But overall the algorithm has kept HN an interesting place. Any good moderation policy has side effects and tradeoffs.
Dang would be the one to know, but it looks to me there's an innocuous explanation here. As for transparency, it's always frustrating to have it. But transparency in algo's invites gaming of those same algo's (and I don't mean by John). So I wouldn't expect the HN modteam to publish details about their algo.
Edit: since I posted this, the article was flagged. Which I think may support the thesis. I will say the mod team might consider a vouch feature for articles the way one exists for users/comments. I think it ought to take a lot of vouching to counteract flags, but there are clearly articles where this is warranted. The OPSec breach this week was one of them (and it was restored).
The one DF article I remember seeing recently is "Why Can’t We Screenshot Frames From DRM-Protected Video on Apple Devices?" and it seemed like just a fluffy post without any technical info and without any research, just an excuse to dog on other operating systems.
Why do some setups allow screenshots and some don't? His post starts with "I’m not entirely sure" and doesn't get better from there. You can google "what is widevine" and get better info. In reality, different browsers and different OS's are certified to different Widevine levels, depending on whether the content goes through a sufficiently protected hardware path. But in Gruber's world, "streaming services somehow don’t care about what Windows users do" (spoiler alert, they obviously do), and you can take screenshots on Windows because "Windows uses a less sophisticated imaging pipeline" (naturally, because it wasn't created by the sophisticated Steve Jobs!)
These posts are the tabloids of the tech world, and uninteresting unless you need a source to cite to win an argument about why your favorite computer company is morally superior to all the other computer companies.
I’m surprised this post too is already flagged.
Case in point: In recent months, a lot of recent Trump/Elon posts have been flagged and disappeared from the front page, but still managed to garner hundreds of points and comments. My assumption is that a significant portion of users use hn.algolia.com, circumventing the flagging algorithm. Personally, I've recently found myself using hn.algolia.com (filtering for top stories in the last 24h) more often than news.ycombinator.com.
If your issue was purely flagging-related, your articles should be able to generate engagement. That's why I'm saying I think there is a lack of interest.
Personally, while I appreciate your work, it's become less interesting to me over time. The value of your blog to me is mainly around getting a perspective into how a die-hard Apple fan would think about a certain topic. This was fun in the period from 2007 until some point in the mid-2010s, when smartphones were revolutionary and the iPhone vs. Android ecosystem battle was still relevant. But ever since phones converged into commodities, it just stopped being interesting. No one is emotionally invested in their choice of phone anymore.
Don't take my word for it. Compare the Google Trends for MacRumors [0] and Daring Fireball [1]. Both faced a sharp decline starting in the mid-2010s. It's not a surprise that engagement on Hacker News would mirror those trends.
[0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...
[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...
I theorize this is due to the overall startup versus incumbents focus as well as the hacker ethos of being opposed to more buttoned up closed systems meant for the general public. Like for example recent posts on EU regulation of Apple get generally favorable reactions and little analysis of actual consumer experience impact, of which Gruber is more keenly analytical.
E.g. most of us on HN would generally appreciate having opt-in side loading and whatnot onto our Apple devices, like macOS. So Gruber just sounds like some kind of apologist when he says this would hurt consumers in the large. We more advanced hacker types are quick to say PEBKAC.
But it’s a shame because his analysis actually offers really good insight in how to build successful consumer products the Apple way.
Hacker News and Daring Fireball have so much in common:
1. Both long-running sites 2. Both serve a curious and tech savvy audience 3. Both run zero graphics 4. Both appreciate / provide long-form journalism
They should be fine bedfellows. What's going on?
The shift from past popularity to apparent suppression is interesting, but without concrete proof, it remains speculation. Still, the frustration about opaque moderation resonates with me.
But let's be real - it's a hot takes/opinions site. It's basically the junk food of content. The world is absolutely awash in "My opinion" kind of blog entries like DF and they generally do extremely poorly on here, for good reason. There will be nothing technically revelatory in anything written there. Nothing that will really change anything. It's an Apple guy with opinions about stuff. For instance that 3.5" was the "sweet spot" for smartphone screen sizes, coincidentally when Apple's smartphones only had 3.5" screen sizes.
Again, I still read it and sometimes enjoy it -- at least when he isn't on his bizarre Mark Gurman and/or Bloomberg "they are my nemesis" nonsense, which absolutely no one cares about but him.
I bet flags weigh more from high karma users. It seems likely that there is a small, dedicated band of anti-DF users with high karma who flag everything.
It probably only takes a few people with enough karma to kill a post, which is consistent with the fact that some posts have a reasonable half life. I don’t think it’s a formal gray list.
I am sure only the moderators have visibility into what's going on here. I would hazard a guess that the user base of HN itself has changed in recent years. It's probably no accident that Gruber points out the ranking shifts in 2021 - a lot of things shifted 2020/2021 due to downstream pandemic impacts.
It's hard to speculate without mod-level visibility though. I'd love for them to weigh in.
If you search or view dang's comments you can see multiple explanations on why and how posts are flagged.
Many people will flag if they think a submission will cause flame. And many people will flag if they see most comments are not constructive and are just complaining about comments. It doesn't make interesting reading. For what it's worth I came here via new comments and the submission was already flagged, so this is for whoever is left!
Check out the usual guidelines:
"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." and remember that people like interesting things. Keep this a good interesting place.
Additionally there seems to be an increasing paranoid-like, conspiratorial, us vs them group mentality and accusation of brigading and censorship. This type of thinking are thought terminations and can morally hurt oneself. They don't encourage people to think of others as other people like themselves but encourages people to see more enemies around them and leads to dead end conclusions and prejudice.
From the FAQ: > Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.
Gruber also posts more now than in recent memory political observations and commentary. As he's gotten older his blog has expanded beyond just the Apple scene.
While I've always felt DF got insta-banned by fanbois of other tribes regardless of the content of his posts (which should be discouraged here in some way imo) it's quite possible he's got folks on The Other Aisle that insta-flag him simply because they don't like his political views.
If that's what's happening, or it's due to a decades-long disagreement with his taste and views regardless of the posts being submitted, that feels like unwarranted censorship that goes against the grain of HN's guidelines.
Add to that a writing style that is often biased, arrogant and inflammatory and you get even less interesting comments on this site.
Exactly the same for Tim Bray, btw - except for Android stuff.
There used to be a time when this stuff was hot, people took sides and breathlessly read anything they could find about the new stuff being released. That time has passed. We stopped caring.
I can understand the demoting.
I'm not sure where all that anger comes from (e.g., there isn't any company I've ever been as angry about as some of the commenters on this thread are). I suspect the response I'd get if I asked would be Apple did this or that, but personally, if I didn't like this or that I'd just buy a product from a different company and go about my day. I don't get hanging on to all that anger.
(And frankly, I'd love if someone did what DF does for other platforms, I like hearing from fans of products and platforms what they see in them.)
1. The HN audience’s preferences have changed over time
2. There’s way more competition – the amount of great content to share and discuss has increased a lot
3. Gruber apparently does not write as much or as well as he did a decade or so ago (at least according to many Daring Fireball readers I know)
4. Yes, many readers don’t like him, but I would also say that many readers, especially younger ones, simply don’t care about him (related to point number 1)
5. Related to all above, Gruber’s influence and relevance in tech debates have probably declined
Also:
> Initial reviews of the much-anticipated iPhone X appeared on October 31, but I’d only had the phone for 24 hours when the embargo dropped
Having Apple hardware before official launch (when review embargo is still on) tells me that the author will never publish bad press for apple, and is not to be trusted on reviewing Apple hardware.
Apple is know for stopping shipping pre-release hardware to people that are honest in their review and that might call out questionable choice.
The guy from unbox therapy said this pretty explicitly: when he started questioning apple's hardware design choices they stopped inviting them to their events and stopped sending them pre-release items.
You can see something similar in mkbhd's videos where he's pretty much constantly walking on thin ice. He says and doesn't say stuff. My gut feeling regarding him is that he can get away with some of that because of his large audience.
But I can’t seem to find that comment here on HN that references how Apple articles get downranked.
It would be difficult to lean in harder than this one does. For me, this is a sign to tune out. Not above drama, but I prefer it in media that activate a wider range of emotions.
Gruber has built a career on a predictable pattern: vociferously defend Apple's every decision (even contradicting his own previous positions when Apple changes course), construct elaborate post-rationalizations for their missteps, while simultaneously maintaining meticulous, years-long grudges against anyone who makes incorrect predictions about Apple.
There's a stark difference between having perspective as an enthusiast and being a reflexive apologist. The "Something Rotten in Cupertino" piece is the exception that proves the rule - a rare deviation that doesn't erase the pattern of selective criticism that's defined his work for years.
What's particularly frustrating is the pretense of even-handedness. I'd respect the work more if it were openly presented as Apple advocacy rather than positioned as independent analysis. The community's collective flagging behavior isn't "censorship" - it's quality control from readers who've recognized this pattern.
HN's algorithm isn't suppressing contrarian viewpoints - it's responding to content that consistently fails to meet the intellectual honesty this community values.
Might be that I changed, might be that the content changed.
I feel that my preferences are generally quite aligned with the bulk of HN readers...
This is #9 on the active page but nonexistent on news. I get a sense that active has more interesting content these days. I think folks are way more sensitive this year and react with downvotes and active shows that content.
In some sense I think having an open mind and partaking in active discussions rather than just popular ones that please everyone is a better path forwards.
> But if you look at the last four years, from 2021 through 2025, Daring Fireball ranks #72.
> Maybe I’ve lost my fastball, and I just don’t write so good no more. Or maybe it’s not me, but the Hacker News audience that has changed in recent years.
The last four years are the outlier to his popularity on HN, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that DF posted a lot of politically-charged takes during this timeframe, including opinions about covid, vax mandates, Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, Elon, and Trump.
I suspect his takes frustrated many of his long-term readers, leading to less sharing and more flagging on HN - maybe by users with more influence - coupled with the site’s opaque algorithms/weightings picking up on the negative sentiment.
https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/
* https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/27/youll-never-gue...
Given the amount of stupid things that end up on this site, this is asinine.
I stopped abruptly when posts and tweets became (to me) shockingly pro Israel and excused/justified/diminished the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
I understand the situation in Israel is complicated, and there is a strong relationship between the US and Israel, but as a citizen of a former occupied nation I can not stomach any attempts to rationalize the genocide happening in Palestine.
But John, your cheerleading for Israel's genocide --- man. Way before the election of the current cheerleader-in-chief for that effort, you were ahead of the game.
You said that students who protested this genocide should be expelled from college (you've got a friend in the White House now, John!):
> These students should be expelled from college, not placated.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/10/19/violence
And, most sickening of all, you cheered the indiscriminate pager attack that maimed children, which your friend in the White House has now got a golden pager memorializing:
> This whole operation sounds like it would make for a great movie.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/09/17/israel-hezbolla...
I could go on, but the effect was heartbreaking. My old friend, the voice in my little Pasadena apartment all those years ago, clapping for the maiming of children and howling for the expulsion of students who disagree with him? Who was this guy? Who is this guy? Had I read him wrong the whole time? Had I changed --- would I have loved those blown-up Lebanese kids back in 2002, and now I'd gone soft? I don't know. But if I'd visited DF for the first time in 2003 and found content calling for the expulsion of Iraq War protesters, I don't think I'd have made a second visit.
I know that stubbornness and misplaced pride go hand in hand, but it’s harming the both of them.
I would definitely read DF more often if I didn’t have to use Safari’s reader mode just to be able to read it.
It is then easier to see what is going on. You follow or ignore a thread whether the upvotes and downvotes are from "your kind of people"
It is then easier to see what is going on. You follow or ignore a thread whether the upvotes and downvotes are from "your kind of people"
Did DF ever allow comments on its own website? I vaguely remember gruber once saying: “If you want to comment on my blog, write your own blog.”
> What bothers me is that it’s unexplained. Which, ultimately, seems not so much censorial as just cowardly.
Huh.
OP’s submissions are likely not popular because of a mixture of them being not that interesting or useful and also contentious. Contentious submissions get massively reduced in visibility automatically. And stuff like an iPhone review significantly after other mainstream reviews is just not that interesting.