One of my biggest gripes with the social media you and I have quit is that it has strongly encouraged flippant, black-and-white responses like the one you're responding to. Nuance, by and large, has been removed from public discourse.

Edit: Just speaking for me, HN is next. Doubt I'll stick 'round much longer.

It went weirdly assumed that HN is somehow different. I don't believe in social media addiction, but addicts are known for lying to themselves and making excuses. If you're quitting social media because you don't think it's healthy, you need to look at any social media you're still on really closely.

There are several key things that make HN different:

- no followers / following (no incentive to increase engagement)

- no notifications of responses to comments (maybe there's a way to do this with RSS but at least it's not obvious)

- no ads

- no endless feed

HN is much more like an RSS feed of interesting articles, where people can leave comments -- there is some back and forth (as in this case) but not a lot; it's centered around the linked content and thoughts on that content, not on engaging with other users. It's not monetized and therefore doesn't employ all the tricks that SM uses to "drive engagement", which is often driven by outrage (which is therefore a highly desirable component of a SM).

No ads? The majority of hn submissions are ads! Comments too.

> majority

be serious

You forgot a big one: content shown to you is not selected by an algorithm developed by a large group of talented psychologists and computer scientists that targets a very human reaction to emotion to maximize dopamine production, addiction and attention.

> no notifications of responses to comments

If you notice you keep hitting the "threads" link, then perhaps there is a case of addiction.

HN may survive if upvote/downvotes are removed, but until then it will continue to be astroturfed and manipulated heavily to push narratives and subconsciously teach the startup/hacker community which opinions are favored and disfavored today.

you could argue that the home page is "manipulated" (though I don't think it's as nefarious as you suggest), but you can just as easily view all posts in chronological order instead of the home page; upvoting of articles interesting to see what other users find relevant / useful but wouldn't affect.

I browse the titles and click on what seems interesting to me, regardless of the number of upvotes.

It’s more about the comments than the front page. Most HNers don’t bother clicking links and just read top of the fold comments.

Shit, maybe now's as good a time as any. Let's see if I can keep this response at the top of my comment history! :D