I've had both views, and still think that the first is fairly accurate.
I'm no longer so certain that HN is strongly right-wing. There are definitely right-wing members, and so long as they act within HN's guidelines that's possibly a Good Thing in the spirit of airing a range of views across the spectrum (not in its more recent psychiatric sense), which would include debunking fallacious and calling out of actively dangerous views.
From what I've been able to directly observe,[1] both left- and right-wing political harrangues and advocacy seem to fare poorly. Right-wing think tanks, Reason being the notable exception, are rarely linked to HN. Most news stories come from largely centrist sources, with the NY Times and WSJ both being amongst the most frequently hitting the front page. (Both have seen a sharp drop in front-page appearances as their respective paywalls have tightened, NYT falling to < 25% of its prior frequency, a point I'd like to see explored in detail as journalism's fight for survival continues.)
Ideological talking points / memes tend to be low-effort, regurgitations, and easy to post to threads, especially early. And I suspect, with some basis in media theory, that this tends to favour the populist right.[2] This post itself has seen a sharp reshuffling (which is continuing as I make some later comments to it, on that specific topic) as votes and flags take effect. The previously top-ranked comment is now (quite rightfully IMO) flagged: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646319>), along with numerous others.
Unfortunately overall substantive discussion and story placement on the front page have both suffered as a consequence (points I've made in email to dang).
I'm no longer so certain that HN is strongly right-wing. There are definitely right-wing members, and so long as they act within HN's guidelines that's possibly a Good Thing in the spirit of airing a range of views across the spectrum (not in its more recent psychiatric sense), which would include debunking fallacious and calling out of actively dangerous views.
From what I've been able to directly observe,[1] both left- and right-wing political harrangues and advocacy seem to fare poorly. Right-wing think tanks, Reason being the notable exception, are rarely linked to HN. Most news stories come from largely centrist sources, with the NY Times and WSJ both being amongst the most frequently hitting the front page. (Both have seen a sharp drop in front-page appearances as their respective paywalls have tightened, NYT falling to < 25% of its prior frequency, a point I'd like to see explored in detail as journalism's fight for survival continues.)
Ideological talking points / memes tend to be low-effort, regurgitations, and easy to post to threads, especially early. And I suspect, with some basis in media theory, that this tends to favour the populist right.[2] This post itself has seen a sharp reshuffling (which is continuing as I make some later comments to it, on that specific topic) as votes and flags take effect. The previously top-ranked comment is now (quite rightfully IMO) flagged: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646319>), along with numerous others.
Unfortunately overall substantive discussion and story placement on the front page have both suffered as a consequence (points I've made in email to dang).
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Notes:
1. <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/tagged/HackerNewsAnalytics> and <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...> will point to much of this.
2. See generally the Frankfurt School's work. Dwight MacDonald's "A THeory of Mass Culture" (1953) develops the idea <https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon...>, as does Umberto Eco's "Ur Fascism" (1995) <https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/https://www.nybo...>.