Well ... Bubbles are everywhere ... you may live in one too? So maybe I am.
"not so bad" ... means what? It's bad but I got used to it. For me this is always the beginning of the end ;-)
Would I want to go back to the so-called golden, idealized age of the web in the late 90s/early 2000s? No.
So, what I'm saying is that it hasn't deteriorated. The only thing that's happening is that HN is an echo chamber.