I'm here because there's zero gate to signing up and ocmmenting.

I'd bet the closure of other walled gardens like reddit drives traffic more than anything of content.

These comment sections follow the same trajectory of all comment sections since the birth of the internet.

just a side note: HN is just a well laid out site thats easy to read and easy to comment on. i find reddit hard to use, making me click to see more comments and then taking me to a new page and disrupting my flow, yuk.