This sounds like your disappointment is largely that HN has high volume behind political opinions which you disagree.
No.
It's that there's little opportunity for meaningful, substantial discussion in a form that moves discourse forward.
HN's guidelines are reasonable. Their application is lacking. And where discussion occurs on controversial subjects which challenge the status quo, one example of which is the current governance of the country in which HN operates, HN's guidelines actively handicap those arguing against power.
The fact that those with the advantage of power also tend strongly toward nonsubstantive, partisan rhetoric, inflammetory baiting, and gloating ... helps little.
My comparison isn't of HN against discussion at other sites. Again, HN is generally better though the bar is parlous low. There are some other smaller discussions which seem better managed, the most notable of which I'm aware is Metafilter, for reasons which may merit further exploration. There are reasons to believe that any sufficiently large discussion will tend to a minimum viable standard for reasons I've discussed for many years though scattered amongst many comments here and elsewhere, ultimately having to do with media theory, power laws, and group dynamics.
What the HN of the past three days does suggest is at least four years of distressingly poor discussion quality. I hope not longer than that, and if at possible, shorter.
As for news: I read / listen to news media to some extent. Many of those are exceptionally poor, and my results recently writing a parser for CNN's "lite" page give measurable assessment of that. My own media selection is generally left-centrist, and includes numerous non-US venues. I can assure you that the general take on the US is somewhere between disappointment, shock, and horror.
I've pinged dang on some previous threads which I'd have liked to see discussed.
He's been commenting for a few years now about being pretty much maxed out on his moderation and email capacity, and intensive posts simply cannot get the moderation that's required for substantive discussion. He (and other mods, and member flags) can clean up the worst messes account bans are fairly frequent (107 public bans in the past year: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1737783933&dateRange=custom&...>
I'd been meaning to do that check for a few weeks (I'd asked dang about ban frequency and trends, he doesn't have data handy). At least over the past five years its ... reasonably constant. How many unannounced bans occur of course I don't know.
Overall results: ban notices weren't really a thing until 2015--2016. For years up to 2014--2015 I checked for comments additionally by pg as dang wasn't moderator in early years. There may be some additional notices by sctb, in total 344 from 14 July 2016 to 16 August 2019, see: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1737752605&dateRange=all&dat...>.
*: Most of these 11 results are discussion about bans, rather than ban notices. Following 2014--2015 the pattern matches are far more often about actual ban actions.
No.
It's that there's little opportunity for meaningful, substantial discussion in a form that moves discourse forward.
HN's guidelines are reasonable. Their application is lacking. And where discussion occurs on controversial subjects which challenge the status quo, one example of which is the current governance of the country in which HN operates, HN's guidelines actively handicap those arguing against power.
The fact that those with the advantage of power also tend strongly toward nonsubstantive, partisan rhetoric, inflammetory baiting, and gloating ... helps little.
My comparison isn't of HN against discussion at other sites. Again, HN is generally better though the bar is parlous low. There are some other smaller discussions which seem better managed, the most notable of which I'm aware is Metafilter, for reasons which may merit further exploration. There are reasons to believe that any sufficiently large discussion will tend to a minimum viable standard for reasons I've discussed for many years though scattered amongst many comments here and elsewhere, ultimately having to do with media theory, power laws, and group dynamics.
What the HN of the past three days does suggest is at least four years of distressingly poor discussion quality. I hope not longer than that, and if at possible, shorter.
As for news: I read / listen to news media to some extent. Many of those are exceptionally poor, and my results recently writing a parser for CNN's "lite" page give measurable assessment of that. My own media selection is generally left-centrist, and includes numerous non-US venues. I can assure you that the general take on the US is somewhere between disappointment, shock, and horror.