[zemo]

HN functions to announce libraries, programming languages, projects, stuff like that. It functions as a thing to find out what's happening in programming and in the tech industry; that's why I continue to check it as I have done for 15 years running now. So it's not useless space; I still get a lot out of visiting HN, but that's in the form of announcements, not in the form of socialization. As a place of discussion I would agree with LexiMax that HN isn't a functioning social space.

[LexiMax]

Thank you for picking up on that nuance. I actually think that gamified voting systems are pretty decent at content aggregation. I regularly poach stories from HN for discussion in other, less dysfunctional communities.

HN still has a problem with mob censorship of stories, but because there are generally far fewer story submissions than comments, plus the fact that https://news.ycombinator.com/active exists which surfaces flagged stories for users who aren't logged in, this mob censorship tends to be much less effective. It forces the censors to put in the extra leg-work of going into the comments section instead.