Some times I come across old threads in Google searches and I’m shocked by the quality of the older discourse. It’s much harder to find threads with deep, nuanced conversations today than it was even a few years ago.
The sharpest change happened around the start of the pandemic when everyone started working from home. I think HN became a social outlet for more people all at once. Combine that with pandemic-related frustrations and the vibe here became sharply angrier. Even dang has mentioned the pandemic-related influx of angry users in a few comments.
Lately I’m also surprised at how anti-tech and pro-regulation the comment sections have become. Recent Facebook threads are the best example of a lot of angry, low-effort comments (do we really need 100 comments from different people bragging about quitting Facebook every time the topic comes up?).