[qPM9l3XJrF]

HN has an interesting business model relative to other social sites. Instead of serving targeted ads, the site itself is essentially one giant ad for Y Combinator. That creates better incentives to promote high quality discussion because low quality discussion more directly harms the YC brand. But it's still gotten a lot worse over the years.

[Nextgrid]

HN's business model does not rely on "engagement", which means they encourage interesting and in-depth discussions instead of flame-wars and low-quality clickbait content.

Furthermore the "algorithm" is well-understood and is driven by users as opposed to a black-box algorithm designed to optimize "engagement".

Finally human moderation here is competent and keeps things in check, as opposed to treating it like a cost center and outsourcing it to underpaid people working in terrible conditions who most likely don't speak our language natively and might misunderstand the context or meaning of things (which becomes a problem when you're supposed to draw the line between what's offensive/snarky and not).