I'll keep it short... I'm a critic, who is also promoting an alternative (https://mendoapp.com), but when I post something I've written or built on hacker news, and I have access to analytics, I see that referral traffic from hacker news is typically zero, or less than whatever vote count I receive (which is typically not a lot of votes).so, based on this, I don't believe anyone is really evaluating new submissions, and I don't believe it's possible to get exposure on hacker news without a voting ring.
if that's the case, can we really trust that hacker news is surfacing the best content?