Hacker News didn’t turn into Reddit because of AI, but it’s certainly turning into Harvard Business Review. The primary benefit of the HN-saturating component of modern AI is about allowing untrained managers to delegate some or all their work to cheap labor. Without that benefit of delegating to one’s contracted agents, the majority of HN’s AI interests over the past two years evaporate. So, yes, we’re still an insider community for professionals, but a lot of those professionals have revealed their preference for management rather than individual contribution, and in a very short period of time. It’s no wonder the community is tearing itself apart: I can think of no greater insult to our ICs that aren’t interested in delegating their work to others, than turning this community into an HBR forum. “Ten ways to get more work out of your workers” is just as offensive a submission to ICs as it always has been whether they’re employers, contractors, or generative AI — but now that anyone can be a manager, with HNs mods choosing to remain powerless against submissions of managerial content, here we are. The only recourse left is for users to start flagging managerial content as unsuitable for the site, since the mods will be forced by their own adopted principles to accept that popular opinion as well. Sadly, I don’t think there’s enough ICs left here to outweigh the managers’ upvotes.

Community size and cohesion are definitely key factors. But there is still strong signal to noise ratio here (thank you dang et al for all the work).

yeah HN really reminds me of reddit before the Digg exodus. I wonder if it will have the same fate eventually as it gets more popular and moderation can't keep up

Its funny, because the Digg migration is probably when Reddit started going down hill.