Well, I've been using (surfing?) the web since the late 90s and sure, some things have become more commercial, there are new walled-gardens, some ads are annoying, cookie banners annoying but really you can do everything you could do back then an 100x more.

Would I want to go back to the so-called golden, idealized age of the web in the late 90s/early 2000s? No.

So, what I'm saying is that it hasn't deteriorated. The only thing that's happening is that HN is an echo chamber.