[krapp]

This is an often repeated claim, but I've never found it plausible.

The reasons this forum has remained under the radar for the majority of people are more likely related to it being hosted on a subdomain of a site almost no one has even heard of, it being called "Hacker News" (which immediately limits its mainstream appeal) and its content not being shared on popular social media sites outside of the population that already knows about it. Plus, this community has kind of a bad reputation in many tech circles, so many potential users avoid it like the plague.

The design isn't keeping anyone away - Craigslist has a similar low-res design and the mainstream has no problem with it. Old Reddit was similar to HN, and 4chan is even more arcane, and both have huge userbases.

The only people who ever complain about Hacker News' layout are its own users.