I'd pose a different perspective, that Show HN in non-hype cycles tend to have a higher self-imposed bar before posting. With the democratizing, there are many posts where time from first commit to Show HN is on the order of hours, 25m being the shortest I have personally seen. I would contend that community standards have not changed meaningfully, but due to the underlying mix changing, the front page changes too.

That being said, there is an above average, low quality submissions sub-trend, that are obviously trying to plant a money tree. This is largely driven by the "look ma, no hands" Ai tools like OpenClaw, mixed (venn) with the crypto crowd looking to make easy money with near-zero effort.

With that being said, I have definitely seen some real bangers that have large Ai contributions. So I am generally in favor of minimally changing how HN works today. One small change would be adding to the Guidelines and FAQ, giving the agents something to read before posting (such that they know that automated submissions are not allowed[1])

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...