What I enjoy about HN is that for most part we ignore who is saying something and instead focus on the content. This is in contrast to a site like Twitter, where the number of followers and blue checks make a massive difference to the number of people who will see your thoughts. This ends up creating a system that feels fairer. I don’t need to waste time cultivating an audience and farming clout, for instance. I can simply lurk and comment on the rare threads where I know what I’m talking about. I don’t care about my karma, and no one else cares about my karma either.

The exception to this is links to personal blogs, where links to domains of well known people immediately rise to the top. This is a simple question of time - it takes time to evaluate full articles and people are more likely to invest that time if the name seems familiar.