Broadly speaking, all the progressives and creatives have left HN.
It began several years ago. Now, this place is filled with a certain type of person...
There are many reasons for it but part of it is that the moderation team actively curtails all discussion of progressive or political topics even as the world tilts into chaos and strife due to technological issues that are relevant to this community and its parent company.
They claim it is in service of maintaining a conflict-free community and that they are "apolitical" but that is a deception, a straight up lie - censorship of speech is INTRINSICALLY political and the class whom it benefits the most is the class in power. That means the censorship policy here is literally authoritarianism in action. Just dressed up as innocent old "moderation policy". It's a lie. And anyone and everyone who has ever spoken out against Trump, Sam Altman, etc, on this site finds out very quickly that they are subject to thought policing. Either explicitly with moderation actions or implicitly with the threat of a ban -- or, more insidious, the shadow ban. Which the mods here are known to use. (You are silenced without knowing it.)
So, naturally, the only kind of personality who would condone or enjoy such authoritarian suppression of speech which benefits the rich and stifles all opposition to their will would be -- you guessed it -- people who are themselves uncritical authoritarians. The "top down authority" model makes sense to them.
These people may not recognize themselves by that label. Nevertheless it is a psychological type and it has to do with the structure of the parent-child relationship. It is still prevalent in America, especially in red states (though it isn't limited to red states -- other cohorts might be religious families, families of european descent, families with old money or strong patriarchal figures...) where the parent is the "boss" and the child must conform to what is expected.
Those people internalize a "whatever the boss says is right and who am I to fight it" attitude.
Those are the ones who are left behind when all the sensible adults recognize that the speech here is cooled, stifled, or outright silenced in service of the VC's who are actively burning the world to the ground.