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.
Really? Do you really think that a strength of HN is that it is a haven for the alt-right? This is shocking and extremly scary to me. The alt-right wants me to die. Is this site a haven for those who want to kill off people like me? That's abhorrent. I agree that HN is a haven for the alt-right but I do not think that is a GOOD thing! From Wikipedia,
> The alt-right ... is... white supremacist, white nationalist, white separatist, anti-immigration and sometimes antisemitic movement based in the United States
I do not think that it is a strength of HN that it is a haven for the modern day Nazis of the world. I think it strictly devalues the site and reduces conversation quality here dramatically. Those people do not argue in good faith, they flag climate change articles so we cannot talk about good solutions to real problems facing all of us, and they also convince the moderators to ban discussion of Russia's cyberattacks here. The moderators cave their policies to white supremacists and hard-line rules that minimize the points given and comments written about Russian cyberattacks.
That HN is a "haven for [Nazis and racists]" is decidedly not a good thing.