The feeling I often experience scrolling news / social media is not hopelessness about the state of the world as a whole, but hopelessness about the state of these platforms.

HN might have a few idiosyncrasies, but it stands as one of the last places to go with a shared front-page and a high density of interesting and intellectual content.

In contrast, the algorithmically curated and individualized feeds of other platforms feel extremely claustrophobic to me... maybe because I know there's interesting stuff out there, but it's hard to find it when you have to fight through the giant mass of superficial and engagement-optimized posts and articles within the little personalized bubble that the feed algorithms think you belong in.