It's similar to any other corporate/institutionalised group - imagine the "<College_name> Anarchists", or "<College_name> Communists", or so on. "Hacker" News, run by one of the most institutionalized Venture Capital companies out there, is simply marketing at this point.

Luckily, the quality of discussion for tech matters, and the players in the industry that participate, still make this place one of the best ones on the internet for technical discussion. But don't expect the political/historical/cultural/non-technical discussions to be any more insightful than any other group of people having opinions on those subjects.