HN business model is to perpetuate YCombinator's culture. It's probably some of the most effective money YC spends.

+ customer funnel (launch / show HN), + private, free, targeted job board

It’s effective because in this instance their interests align with their audience’s, which is pretty much an ideal situation in such a capitalist economy. Also, I don’t know how much HN costs, but I cannot believe it is disproportionate in the PR and communication budget of something like YCombinator.

Cult, you mean?

And loving it ;)

Bingo! Being open to access, but heavily moderated, is the perfect spot for them. HN is essentially perfect for it's use case and is unlikely to change soon.

I assume that if HN ever caused them any serious PR damage, they'd pull the plug that day. It's always been made clear that it's a single-server site sitting somewhere that was written as a hobby a long time ago. That kind of nothing cost they're willing to take on indefinitely, but not any serious bad media cost. I've always felt that was the reason for the heavy moderation, especially as compared to the anarchic early days. Even with the salaries of dang et al. expenses are probably a rounding error.

Based on the content that gets posted, I don't think there's a way for HN to cause serious PR damage to them.

That's not independent of the moderation, though. Topics that invite heated discussion but aren't absolutely necessary to talk about on HN get nuked very quickly. If it would be absurd for it not to be discussed here, it gets a pinned note from dang telling everyone to behave, and gets carefully monitored to make sure it doesn't degenerate into a riot.

Tapping on the tech pulse and information control/access is the "business model".

Remember, this is a VC firm that runs the joint. We're paying with our data, and that gives them early/first mover advantage.