I wasn't saying that it is happening, just hoping it doesn't get to that point. I found it myself (which I consider late) while I was doing steps to verify my Keybase account. I had only heard of Y combinator once through a friend who works at Google, I've never seen ads or any other mentions of it.

Anyways my point was that, like all the cool places on the internet started with some kind of : low graphics, quality content, friendly community. After a while, maybe 5-10 years, more or less, adoption grows to a point where a corporation wants to buy the place. If they are allowed to do so then they modify the rules, curate the content, add the advertisement or subscription fees and start making money with it.

After that your parents join and the place becomes just an ordinary social network, boring and gentrified as the cool people who were there in the first place move out to another small, new, cool community, and the cycle repeats itself.

So all I'm trying to say is that HN is cool and I hope it doesn't fall into the same trap down the road.