The difference that I justify for using HN over a lot of other aggregators in the quality of the content tends to be much higher. I still have a large backlog of repos and writeups that I'd like to study, all found from submissions on HN.

Time spent on HN was very rarely wasted, and more than once led me to things that directly improved what I do for money.

If HN was a subscription-only service, I'd subscribe in a heartbeat. (It would have a number of downsides, of course.)

HN is probably in my top two time-wasters. And yet, it also gives me genuinely useful information.

It even sometimes prevents wasted time. I'll look at the comments first, and quickly figure out that the article is a waste of time. I find that out faster from the comments than I would from the article. Net result - time saved (or at least time more efficiently wasted...)