I think what people sometimes mean when they say "HN is toxic", is raging incompetence paraded with confidence (and getting upvoted), which I've seen many a time here. Similar to reddit.
Re:Rust Moderation Team Resigns
by the_only_law on Monday November 22, 2021 @02:01PM
(#29310294)
Infosec seems to have its share of angry people in general. One notable blog you’ll see on here from time to time generally has informative or moderate content, but the comments always seem to be a bunch of pointless shouting at things not really related to the post.
I strongly agree. I was reading the archive of an early infosec group the other day, the culture was extremely hostile. 70% of the posts were insightful technical discussions, the remaining 30% was full of personal attacks and name callings, merely reading those posts made me want to throw my computer out of the window.
I'm not saying HN is great, but to give a sense of scale: on HN, that type of posts would be flagged to death almost immediately.