This effect is partially muted by the fact that one can only see the vote status of one’s own post. There is still a tendency toward conformity, but at least the suggestion to vote with other readers isn’t apparent like it is on many content aggregators/discussion media.

Hacker News is at least somewhat informative in the tech sphere. It tends to favor more esoteric technology like Lisp in lieu of things like Java & JavaScript which is far more favored on Reddit/Programming. Politics are mostly left leaning mixed with some Libertarian views. There is a good splattering of non tech stuff as well (music, art, literature, linguistics...etc). I'd say it's a far cry from fake news and cat videos.

Oh, look at them rush to White Knight their own bubble. "Not OUR echo chamber, no! We're different, you see, because reasons."