Part of what makes hackernews worth participating in is that the owners are not profit-maximizing and trying to extract the maximum possible value from the site.
It's a trade: y-combinator, by cultivating a group of talented technical contributors, gets to advertise hiring posts for free and, in some ways, autistically contributes to the community.
In exchange, we all get a place for thoughtful discussion with reasonably fair moderation.
It's a fair trade for those involved and closer to a non-profit model than Reddit which is clearly trying to extract as much value as possible from the content creators on their platform in exchange for giving them community/platform.
> Part of what makes hackernews worth participating in is that the owners are not profit-maximizing and trying to extract the maximum possible value from the site.
How do you know? Just because there is no ads doesn't mean they don't have any benefits from keeping HN thriving.
Also for me I like HN because of the content, not because I care about YC's motive. You are obviously different.
