I'm also drawn in by it, really need to actively remind myself to step back.

Not long ago there was a massive r/space thread with thousands of top comments about govt funding + puns and hidden down the bottom after clicking "more" was a JPL engineer who worked directly on the project linked with incredibly insightful commentary on the inner workings of the satellite. These things should be valued more and not hidden from the world.

Social media websites all suffer from a phenomenon of being flooded low quality content the moment they become popular.

Reddit's content quality dropped significantly the moment they deployed their mobile app, though it had been on a downward decline for a while.

I've seen HN being discussed at length on Reddit as a better alternative for "adylts", but now we see the same slow decline here.

The important questions are...

1. How can social media sites control quality of submitters.

2. What is the next site everyone over 30 is moving to and how do we stop all these teenagers from following us? /s

the key to sanity while on Reddit is to stay on the non-default & topic/your area of interest specific subs.

> How can social media sites control quality of submitters.

I'd like to see how a system where downvotes have reasons given works? Slashdot tries for upvotes.

Currently you might be downvoted for being offtopic, but you might just think it's because someone disagrees politically.

It would be an interesting overlay to create for HN

Make downvotes and upvotes an economy. You can't downvote what you don't have to spend. You can't post if your bankrupt of points.

Idea might need fine tuning.

Metafilter has maintained reasonably high levels of discussion and civility. Part of this is active mods, the other part is that an account costs some money to open.

I’d pay for HN

How much?

It’s worth at least as much as the New York Times, which is $8 a month

Metafilter has no threads and no comment voting (as far as I can see).

It's not really the same sort of experience.

It's more like a message board - which is too inefficient. Time ordered comments makes for poor content.

Not surprisingly, not everyone is an expert on Rust, but everyone is an expert on shit happening on the other side of the planet. /s

At least the technical discussions (aside from Google evil, Apple walled garden, new Microsoft/same old Microsoft, etc. etc.) are on average higher quality than elsewhere.

“Some superficial observation” well I think this is where you miss it. The state of the US is so bad in the eyes of many outsiders that yes many see it simply as China/America government bad. I mean since Snowden it is very clear that the American government is actively spying on everyone not just foreigners but basically everyone. That sounds bad and is definitely hostile if you are an American but not unexpected as a foreigner however. Next we have recent examples of China and the US detaining certain populations. That looks like a massive human rights violation in both countries. Also the state of American politics looks very corrupt from an outsiders perspective. Daily accusation of a corrupt government that the media obviously wants portrayed as an incompetent failure of a leader and the people to scared or powerless to change it demonstrating the political system is a sham. It was even in the news recently other heads of states at NATO laughing at the President. I can not picture that happening with any other President. The world has “gone to shit” for a lot of people and these superficial issues are not so superficial to others and their voice is growing louder every year with the ever decaying state of affairs.