[everdrive]

It was pretty amazing in the early days. It has been bad for a while. The current era is definitely something new, though. Popular subreddits are mostly worthless, and the platform both cannot control all the bots and astroturfing, but also their attempts to do so have degraded the experience for the average user.

[ticulatedspline]

"You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

Was active on Reddit a long time ago, there's a liminal band of popularity in which a service tends to offer the best experience. Enough interest to be good, not enough interest to make it shitty or incentivize abuse.

It's difficult to remain in that band particularly because at some point you have to actively fight growth, not sure HN is all that immune either. I think HN tries to stay in that band via it's archaic UI and somewhat intimidating culture.

[everdrive]

Yep, I think that's right. Even if reddit, its company, and its moderators were all perfect, it might still crumble and become awful under the weight of its popularity. Too many bad actors, too many companies astroturfing, not enough monetization to solve these problems. And of course the site, the company, and the moderators are far from perfect.

[whattheheckheck]

Hackernews is even worse

[everdrive]

That's unquestionably incorrect, although I would agree that HN is declining in quality as its user base balloons in size (this would be the bigger contributor) and as general disenfranchisement with tech companies rises. (this would be a smaller, but still-noticeable contributor)