Fun fact: Half of all HN posts/ comments were made in the last five years. I'm brand-new to here instead of reddit (no subs grrr), but look old as the hills from this perspective.
HN has got worse in some places - I think size is the enemy of any community - but HN has comfortably sat behind the curve because it doesn't try to leave its niche. It is mostly outside forces that have changed HN (I.e growth of the general Internet population and big tech), whereas Reddit, etc try to change themselves (by changing their format and gamifying engagement)
HN's worst times was at peak free money tech optimism.
Plenty of pretending that running a "successful" startup wasn't 90% scamming. The actual tech and programming didn't matter, all that mattered was that your `hello world.proj` was a money pump from users to shareholders or from shareholders to founders.
Just find all the old posts that say Uber/WeWork/Theranos/Tesla/SpaceX/etc will all make bajillions in 10 years and their tech is amazing and the problems are actually not that hard.
> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
Bottom of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html