[sph]

Agreed. I would go so far as to say all the ills of modern social media are because of ranked platforms, such as upvote/downvote-based, or like-based. They turn into echo chambers, that promote witty one-liners over nuance, and any sort of controversial position is effectively censored.

That said, HN functions decently well, though in some ways it is even worse in the censoring the outliers.

[bananalychee]

HN has a good model for technical discussions, and the fact that it's a forum with a limited scope whose audience mostly consists of technology professionals probably helps a lot in filtering low-effort posting (not to downplay the role of moderation). But when it comes to emotional topics like anything political, it clearly devolves into what you described.

That makes me wonder if there are forums out there that focus on current events in politics or economics and successfully filter emotionally-charged posts; the few commentators on X who manage to stay detached are the only people keeping me on algo-driven social media.