If this is the future of HN, there’s going to be a market opening for a replacement!
We started doing Launch HNs in early 2017. You can see the complete list here: https://news.ycombinator.com/launches. The advice we give to YC startups about launching on HN is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/yli.html. The logistical parts only apply to YC cos, but the communication advice applies to everyone.
You're certainly right that not all these startups would make the front page through upvotes only, but we do work hard to write them up in a way that we hope will genuinely interest the community, and many of them end up getting a lot of upvotes and staying on the front page a long time.
Science of skincare, underserved markets, sociological phenomena.
But all that aside, plenty of geeks with darker skin found it interesting enough to click, myself included.