As the years go on I ask myself that same question more and more.
The HN of my day wouldn't have boosted a site pushing XR's brand of horseshit and mostly eschewed fringe political fever dream type posting in general. I say mostly because I'm aware of the notable counterexamples, but they were relatively contained.
The HN of my day boosted the fringe political fever dreams of Curtis Yarvin and Peter Thiel as peak Silicon Valley intellectualism, and, well, here we are.
Your account was created in 2015. That's the year that Yarvin's talk was rescinded at StrangeLoop and the comments here in the very thread about it were widely supportive of his ban. The rare arguments in his favor were more centered on their thinking that his talk was a technical one about Urbit.
The same big posters of today were big posters then openly slamming the guy for being an unrepentant racist.
Any posts about urbit were basically flamebait and all of its devs, not just Yarvin, as well as most of the personalities from LessWrong were very effectively chased off this board.
This place has a long history and long memories and revisionist garbage won't be tolerated.
Well, as someone who's been here since 2008, allow me to say:
The HN of my day boosted the fringe political fever dreams of Curtis Yarvin and Peter Thiel as peak Silicon Valley intellectualism, and, well, here we are.
Mostly low (single-digit) engagement posts and lots of derision. Thiel's CS courses and Foundation got more mentions but their brand of politics? Definitely not signal boosted here.
