FWIW I agree with almost everything you said, but I think there's a few things that HN has that Reddit doesn't. Reddit's larger American user base tends to dominate most subs with American perspectives but HN seems to have a decently large EU population, especially during EU daytime. Reddit also has a pretty strong anti-capitalist bias in most medium sized subreddits that HN doesn't have, and I perceive that Reddit's average user age is in university while HN's average user age is probably approaching middle age (which probably contributes to the political differences.) I generally think your criticism is spot on.