Unless you’re willing to pay for it you can’t have an operating sytem that isn’t a real estate for ads or at least some sort of commercial interest.
Or maybe you can.
The community itself is another issue but even that isn't as clear cut as it seems if you look at any of the more political topics that are being posted.
In general HN isn't the place you go to discuss politics, social issues or current events some posts are allowed when it's in the public's interest or they are relevant to the wider tech industry but that's about it.
This thread (along with all COVID threads) are weighted to sink very quickly. So you won't see them often, but when you do, there's a treasure of diversity of information and viewpoints. The best threads are the ones that start with a greyed out comment.
Arguably even HN despite being technically a pro-bono side project serves the commercial interest of YC (and possibly others) if it didn’t and especially if it would have a negative impact on them it wouldn’t be around.
And HN is a very niche social media (if you can even call it that) with strict rules.
Anything with wider appeal has to be monetized.
The only monetization we have for the Internet is attention/value extraction from the user base.