In what sense is HN an algorithmic feed? It is neither personalised nor does it have a significant discretionary boost beyond "age" and "upvotes". It's qualitatively a different thing.

Sort by weighted upvotes vs time decay is an algorithm. You can review the psedocode here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013

Note that there is also "censorship" (!) - `gag_factor` - even in this free thought paradise. The lesson is that no matter your scale, suppressing certain content is necessary to prevent low quality posts and spam from turning your site into a swamp.

Correct, it is not personalized. So we need a different word than 'algorithmic'. People keep saying that word when they want to "ban" a certain kind of math. But they should at least be particular about what they don't like (sort your friends' posts chronologically is also a personalized algorithm, after all..)