Maybe not. As far as I can tell it doesn't prioritize engagement/hours spent over everything else, first page is a mixture of very niche stuff and very common stuff with very little clickbait either way.

To me HN feels like having a conversation with an interesting friend. It's not necessarily the most productive thing to do, nor it has any other major goal inherent to it, still at the end of the day it doesn't feel mindless or time lost.

To compare, if I use Twitter for 10mins, it's 1min of entertainment at best and 9minutes of bullshit/flamebait/doomscrolling/shallow crap that makes me feel dizzy by the end of it.

Funny you should say that.

I got into a bit of a twitter rabbit hole and ended up realizing my heart was racing, knuckles white and teeth grinding.

I was furiously pounding on my keyboard to reply to what was probably a bot before I came to my senses and closed the page.

I can see how that shit is addictive.

Rage is a hell of drug.

It's definitely not its design goal as far as I can tell. However we the people in general have addictive tendencies and we're just kind of turning HN into every other compulsively scrolling social media.

But that's on us.