Hacker News is my digital home – why I left X but stayed here

7 FerkiHN 8 7/7/2025, 11:17:04 AM

I discovered Hacker News about five years ago. At first — I didn’t get it. The UI felt weird. Clicking my profile would sometimes log me out. Nothing made sense. So I closed the tab and moved on.

But something brought me back. And with time, I realized:

HN is not about design. It’s about signal over noise.

I’ve tried posting on Twitter (or X, whatever it’s called now). The result? 12 views, no reactions, zero engagement. Just a void.

Hacker News is different. It’s like a quiet corner of the internet where people still think, not just react. Here, I shared my projects, joined discussions, and felt something real: No likes. No follower counts. Just humans and ideas.

I recently posted about a notes app I made in C with a GUI for Windows. Only 67 KB in size. Simple, fast, and it just works. And people here actually cared. They asked, they replied, they shared their views.

That’s rare online.

So I just wanted to say — thank you. Thanks to everyone who keeps HN alive. Thanks for the culture. For the sanity.

I hope Hacker News lives forever. Because if places like this disappear, we’ll lose something truly important.

(Also, I go by Ferki, in case you’ve seen my posts around)

Comments (8)

mouse_ · 15h ago

I don't see your notes app in your submissions but it's got me curious. Did you just use windows.h?

FerkiHN · 15h ago

Oh yeah, I said "recently" incorrectly, it was on the previous account that I lost.

theandrewbailey · 15h ago

Would you mind finding and sharing the link anyway?

FerkiHN · 13h ago

I've been trying to find a link for my project for a long time, but I don't remember the name of the post and the repository, I've already changed myself with the loss of the project.

FerkiHN · 15h ago

Thank you for everything!

incomingpain · 14h ago

>I’ve tried posting on Twitter (or X, whatever it’s called now). The result? 12 views, no reactions, zero engagement. Just a void.

All new accounts are shadowbanned into the 'spam' filter. You likely also didnt connect with a topic or thread that had any activity.

Twitter approaches things differently that's all.

>Here, I shared my projects, joined discussions, and felt something real: No likes. No follower counts. Just humans and ideas

You have 6 likes at the time i opened this thread. 5 comments in an hour. They absolutely do have an algo that takes into account these things.

>I hope Hacker News lives forever. Because if places like this disappear, we’ll lose something truly important.

I think it was something like month or 2 ago when vpn usage started mattering on HN and it really improved.

FerkiHN · 11h ago

Thanks for the reply! Yeah, I understand that Twitter/X has its own rules and filters — maybe I just wasn’t “using it right.” But what struck me wasn’t just the low engagement — it was the feeling. Everything there feels like noise. Hacker News feels like signal.

Sure, HN has scoring and ranking behind the scenes too, but it still feels... human. Like people here actually read what you write. And that’s rare these days.

And yeah — the VPN filtering really helped! I’ve noticed less spam lately too. Whatever the mods and devs did, it’s clearly working.

By the way, I still use Twitter/X — been there for about two months now. But even after spending time there, the engagement is way lower compared to what I’ve experienced on HN. That says a lot.

Appreciate your thoughts! Just wanted to share what this place means to me.

shiva0801 · 15h ago

intresting