I didn't say HN was "all tech oriented". Please stop misquoting me. I said "There was a time when reddit, HN, digg, etc were all tech oriented. Meaning "HN was tech oriented", "reddit was tech oriented", "digg was tech oriented", etc.
I didn't say HN was all tech. My point was that HN was tech oriented like reddit, digg, etc.
Ah, I see that I misbound that pesky "all". Sorry! But the point is more or less the same. Actually, let me reply to all your points.
HN isn't less tech-oriented now than it used to be. The mix of topics fluctuates, but within a stable range which has been about the same since pg renamed Startup News to Hacker News 12 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html. That announcement is where this language originated: "That includes a lot more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." Anyone who's read the HN guidelines should recognize that.
We've put a ton of effort into countering wares-pushing. If you think you see a story that is only on HN's front page because "journalists, NGOs, PR, foreign actors, think tanks, etc" are sneaking it in, you should let us know right away at hn@ycombinator.com.
I don't know if we count as "techies" in your book but if there's one thing I'm sure we're not, it's "agenda driven media people".
If "most of the interesting stuff has no traction or discussion", you could help out a lot by upvoting it. That's at least an easier problem to solve than interesting things not getting submitted in the first place.
I didn't say HN was all tech. My point was that HN was tech oriented like reddit, digg, etc.