Ask HN: Who reads the "newest" feed, and what do you look for there?
9 rand_num_gen 6 9/12/2025, 6:26:09 PM
Most people browse Hacker News through the front page (top / hot), since it's already filtered for quality by the community.
But the "newest" feed feels very different: it's raw, unfiltered, and often low-quality. Yet I notice some users clearly dig into it, upvote good posts, and bring hidden gems to the front page.
I'm curious: - Who here regularly reads the "newest" feed? - What kind of content are you looking for (early projects, research papers, niche blogs, etc.)? - Do you see yourselves as "content scouts" for the rest of the community, or just looking for things you personally enjoy? - How do you filter signal from noise?
I think this is an interesting part of HN culture that doesn't get discussed much.
A few weeks back I was upvoting anything on the new page that wasn’t low quality posts about AI like “I vibe coded that almost works”, “Show HN: My me-too startup that’s just a Chat GPT” wrapper but that onslaught either stopped or I don’t care about it anymore.
That is how almost all of the front page items get to the front page to begin with.
> just looking for things you personally enjoy?
Mostly, plus the new feed has more variety (and more noise too) than the front page. So you'll find items you enjoy but that don't actually ever garner enough upvotes to make it to the front page.
The vast knowledge in the collective HN community never fails to amaze me.