[arp242]

> If you want evidence of this you can just hang around with showdead on for a while in any thread that even vaguely broaches a political topic, or follow moderator dang's account long enough.

Judging a community by posts that are moderated away seems like the wrong way to go about things. By this standard almost any community is horrible $bad_thing. It's just that on HN you have a bit more transparency than many other sites. If you don't want to see that stuff then don't turn showdead on.

Now, I have my own criticisms of HN, and some (but not all) align with yours. But I don't really want to go in to details about that as I feel that's moving the goalposts from the claims made in the notice: "full of sexism and racism", "hang out with white supremacists", and that "the main moderator approves of it". "Out of touch elitist silicon valley nonsense" is not the same as any of that.

> this place looks like a den of alt-right creeps and incels

But it's not. There sure are some of those people, and their posts rarely do well (i.e. they're typically downvoted, certainly not the top post).