- HN is generally favorable than many other websites, but only because those websites are hopelessly toxic.
- Voting system works well for filtering non-informative contents out, but it does prefer some kinds of informative contents than others.
- Conflicts in HN are not common, but once started they are hard to control. HN is not a good place for managing conflicts; it's only good for mild discussions and it has no effective measure to stop discussions from becoming conflicts.
- Of course there are many different opinions less represented in HN. Some of them can be considered as to an inherent bias of HN.
I've got plenty of nits worth picking. I think most people do.
It depends on the topic. Recently, many topics have laid bare the groupthink attitude of the HN community. Any comments even questioning those views, much less actually expressing an opposite view, are instantly downvoted and derided in replies. This attitude is pervasive, all the way up to management. I am currently rate-limited, for example, because I was against GDPR. I was told by @dang:
”I'd be happy to lift the rate limit after these repetitive GDPR controversy threads have died down.”
In other words, as soon as my opinion is irrelevant because there are no threads about it, I can speak again.
That’s pretty much as toxic as it gets.
I've never once found HN a toxic place in the last 4 years. A place to meet people with different opinions and have discussions about those opinions, yeah, but that's beneficial -- literally the opposite of toxic.