I hope people will wake up and start striking against platform dictatorships and profiteering for everything, but I doubt it will happen, and I think there will simply be a lot of meltdowns everywhere and frustrated people that will eventually learn that we'll all see a lot less ads if we go back to meeting up at coffee shops, diners, and bowling alleys for our entertainment off this "scorched hellscape of a parking-meter-esque pay for being unfulfilled" Internet.

Sorry for the rant. :P

I couldn't disagree more. Comments here are still substantial, jokes are downvoted, trolls are flagged.

HN has actually gotten better in the last few years afte4 they resumed demoting of political content. It's much harder to find a flamewar on HN than it was in, say, 2017.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Reddit has always required self-curation even before they went full dark-pattern.

I read HN through RSS and if you catch up say 1 or 2 days later you can see a lot of flagged or even straight up removed posts with a lot of comments and points too which means some people would actually find the content interesting or HN-worthy.

Anybody else could find subreddits that they think cringeworthy, a barren wasteland, or worse.

(As for my politics I seem to be the leftmost in a right leaning batch or the rightmost in a left leaning batch.)

As for comparing HN to reddit?! No, reddit is a sea of mindless groupthink that upvotes jokes, cute animals and general internet junk.

Layoffs, RTO, stupid CEOs decisions… I couldn’t care less. But I guess HN is what their owners want from it, so I better quit soon.

The community is much broader now than it was in, say, 2010, but I find the discussions to be of good quality. Much of that is thanks to 'dang’s splendid moderation.

If only that were true. Still too many narcissists compelled to recount their life's vicissitudes in every comment.

0. Who aren't around HN anymore, and for what reason(s)?

1. Who stuck around HN for a long time, and for what reason(s)?

2. Who joined HN recently and how did they find out about it?

3. Where are 0. people at now?

I think forums fall either of 6 ways:

A. To uncivilized behavior

B. To continual witch hunt

C. Arbitrary, immature, clique moderation

D. To lack of contribution through active participation and content creation

E. To egotistical participants who push others aside: individuals who disagree loudly, constantly, and proclaim they are always right while lacking an ability to recognize ideas that weren't theirs

F. To mediocrity: someone signs up to HN because they saw it on the news, not because they're applying to YC or work in some obscure, high-bar-to-entry subject matter expertise field