Buzzfeed is one of a class of sites that produce a lot of dreck as well as the occasional high-quality article. There are many such sites, mostly media outlets. HN's solution is to penalize them (a little) by default, but take the penalty off under different circumstances, such as if a moderator sees than an article is good or the submitter has a solid track record.
This has proven to be a reasonable compromise. The alternatives—not penalizing these sites at all or banning them altogether—are a lot more problematic, which is how we arrived at this strategy in the first place.
Buzzfeed has proven itself by now to be a legitimate news source, even if the money is coming from the other division (clickbait). And not just tech stories: when big-name publications cut their education coverage entirely, Buzzfeed hired a reporter dedicated to it.
I would expect similar penalizing treatment of other "mixed-quality" sources like Quora, Forbes, Techcrunch, Business Insider, etc.
The problem isn't the legitimacy of Buzzfeed; it's that the low-quality content comes from the same domain as the high-quality stuff, and so if you do nothing to penalize that domain, you get cat pictures on the front page. It's not a moral judgement, but rather a practical measure.
It's really funny. People say Buzzfeed? And I'm like, who do you think is making money right now, our national newspaper or Buzzfeed? Who do you think is hiring instead of being forced to let go of high quality journalists, our national newspaper or Buzzfeed?
Look beyond the brand and into the details and the journalist. Buzzfeed News is legit. Unlike a lot of media sources, they've found a way to be profitable and output quality articles.
Buzzfeed is one of a class of sites that produce a lot of dreck as well as the occasional high-quality article. There are many such sites, mostly media outlets. HN's solution is to penalize them (a little) by default, but take the penalty off under different circumstances, such as if a moderator sees than an article is good or the submitter has a solid track record.
This has proven to be a reasonable compromise. The alternatives—not penalizing these sites at all or banning them altogether—are a lot more problematic, which is how we arrived at this strategy in the first place.