The alternative to me seems to be becoming like a lot of subs on Reddit. It's part of why I like HN so much too, where the signal to noise is so much better.

It’s not you’re just fooled but garbage people with false bravado.

On reddit there was a ton of censorship.

I dislike censorship in general. Someone else decides whether I may read comment xyz from another human being (assuming it is a human being). I don't want censor-in-the-middle people, be it on HN or reddit. Old reddit was easier to use than HN though; on HN we get time-locked as well as jokes-eliminated. That forces a more serious tone. I do not think it really improves the signal to noise ratio though; usually it means that there are fewer comments in general, including potentially interesting comments. I mean, if HN were serious about joke-censorship, any funny story shared by someone else on HN, even if historically accurate, would also have to be censored. After all you can not evaluate whether a claimed story to be true, to NOT be a "joke in disguise". I could go on and on here, but at the end of the day it just boils down as to whether people like censorship or not. You may reason that you prefer it, to "pre-filter away content you never want to read", such as a joke, but for me, I just dislike that someone else sits in the driver seat and tells me what I am allowed to read and what not. I want to decide on that on my own and I have no issue with "noise ratio"; I don't read all comments anyway, simply due to lack of time. I can only glimpse at some of them. Do you really have the time to go through all comments on each entry on HN?

Yet, Reddit is alive and SE is... "struggling". Good jokes also carry information, that's why they work.