[FractalLP]

Hacker News is at least somewhat informative in the tech sphere. It tends to favor more esoteric technology like Lisp in lieu of things like Java & JavaScript which is far more favored on Reddit/Programming. Politics are mostly left leaning mixed with some Libertarian views. There is a good splattering of non tech stuff as well (music, art, literature, linguistics...etc). I'd say it's a far cry from fake news and cat videos.

[IIAOPSW]

Its cause of the people. The more popular something is the worse it gets until eventually its all cats and outrage-culture "fake news". The medium is irrelevant.

Media sucks because you* suck.

*The collective societal you, not the particular individual you.

[waterhouse]

I think some studies have shown that the same set of people (or, let's say, people randomly assigned to one group or the other) can have very different behavior depending on the situation they're in. It seems at least possible that a forum could maintain its rules and norms while people join... though received wisdom says that if too many join at once, then the norms can be broken.

[FractalLP]

Yea, but HackerNews is really only going to appeal to a select group of people. Computer illiterate folk aren't going to be talking about compilers, lisp, APL, Smalltalk, blockchain, or the other 1000 compsci things that come up on here daily.