The article itself was a bit disappointing because it focused on political issues. In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right", as evidenced by the fact that a comment on a controversial topic can easily float near zero points while raking in both upvotes and downvotes. And even those who refer to it as "the orange site" still come back and comment. In other words, HN may be an echo chamber but it is a pretty big one with a lot of voices in it.
both and neither. Partisan discussions, or even any kind of bitching at all ... are outright discouraged. I often step out of line in this regard and don't always agree, but I'm also confident that folk on "the other side" face the same kind of treatment. Though frustrating at times, I respect that it keeps things clean and helps cut out a lot of nonsense, of which the Internet has no shortage should I feel the need to go find some.
EDIT - actually upon some reflection I think that I would have to respectfully disagree, and change my opening sentence here to just "neither". Extremes of opinion that are "off topic" are not tolerated, and this is a good thing.
> The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—
> hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative—
> often masks a deeper recklessness. Ill-advised citations proliferate;
> thought experiments abound; humane arguments are dismissed as
> emotional or irrational. Logic, applied narrowly, is used to justify
> broad moral positions. The most admired arguments are made with data,
> but the origins, veracity, and malleability of those data tend to be
> ancillary concerns. The message-board intellectualism that might
> once have impressed V.C. observers like Graham has developed into an
> intellectual style all its own. Hacker News readers who visit the
> site to learn how engineers and entrepreneurs talk, and what they
> talk about, can find themselves immersed in conversations that
> resemble the output of duelling Markov bots trained on libertarian
> economics blogs, “The Tim Ferriss Show,” and the work of
> Yuval Noah Harari.