Exactly. Part of that can also be about who and how a site is run. Backdoor deals, personal preferences by those in control, organizations that make dominating discussions and votes a priority, etc...
The AI companies are arguably taking taxpayers (via electric bills) on a ride. A lot of the code, which people get fooled into thinking are AI "solutions", is code already written by humans or even stolen by disregarding licenses and copyright. A problem not just in programming, but widely complained about by book authors and artists.
The "AI" makes a few changes of the free content it sucked up, then gives it back based on correct prompts, for a fee. They got it for free, but you will pay a fee. If it is not something simple, it's often riddled with errors or takes a huge numbers of prompts to get it right. So some time was saved in typing, but then lost in code review and fixing errors. Humans that can understand what they are doing, troubleshoot, and architect are still needed.
What was really "shady": 1) Attempts by competitors and their minions to blank out any supporters or positive news on V. 2) Mass shadowbanning and banning of V supporters, while censoring lots of positive coverage. 3) Tipping the scales (also reflected in downvoting), by allowing lies and even direct slander from known persons of competing organizations (languages even on their profiles), while they pushed what looked like HN "favored" or "protected status" languages.
Arguably, only the explosion of AI slop (maybe it's more profitable), has slowed down the outrageous bombardment of Zig and Rust peddling. Languages which are not even in the top 10, but one would not have known that, by the number of previous HN headlines.
Wikipedia has a number of notorious and strange editors who have taken it over as if it was their personal kingdom, where they censor and revert at their pleasure. It's their Wikipedia versus for the public. MrOllie is among the most infamous (somehow has over 258,000 edits - WTH) of this type of editor (or sadistic censor), with a number of articles and posts elsewhere on the Internet about him[1][2].
Complaints about him seem to do nothing, as he appears to have support and students of his brand of sadism and censorship. For instance, Remsense (over 97,000 edits). The group that they are part of, backs each other up and gangs up on others, to make sure they'll get their way.
Don't know what Disney was thinking with letting her continually wreck Star Wars for so long and lose them money. The franchise is near destroyed. Has only a small chance of recovery.
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