Ehn, HN has always been strongly moderated.

I've gotten into plenty of flamewars with Dems, Republicans, Anti-Vaxxers, Pro-Vaxxers, AI Luddites, AI Fundamentalists, China bots, China hawks, Apple fanatics, Apple haters, far-right, far-left, pro-WFH, anti-WFH, pro-immigration, anti-immigration, and others on HN.

I just don't care about filtering my opinions and use HN as a way to kvetch and impart some information I may know about.

At least all this different viewpoints are here, so maybe the difference is if the moderation is ideologically motivated or not.

I'm not quite sure.

I and a couple other long-time HN users have noticed a significant degradation in HN after a persistent boom in sign-ups began around 2022-23.

It's hard to answer lol.

I also think that the quality declined with the incoming AI crowd but on the other hand I also got older over the last years and increased my own skill level...