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Well, one very important difference is that on HN everyone is served the same algorithm.

And one other even more important difference is that Y Combinator does not make money from HN and so have very different incentives than Facebook.

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Basically I agree with your second point. I'd been hung up on the notion that people were maligning specific technical choices (and indeed there are sub-threads where this argument is being advanced), but that's not the case here. Y Combinator's goal with HN is to make money indirectly, by discreetly, almost implicitly advertising itself as an outfit at the centre of things of interest to the "higher end" of the tech field, who might then (a) absorb awareness of it by osmosis and later (b) think of it first when planning their next startup. As such its goals are much more closely aligned with what that crowd enjoys, than with maximising engagement and thus eyeballs on ads.

Everyone being served the same algorithmic results is a genuine technical difference (I believe; do we actually know that HN doesn't customise the front page for logged-in users?). I think it's quite a fine distinction, though -- both sites are trying to hold the user's attention, one just omits to use an available level of customisation. I have no moral objection to either approach.

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