I think you're mixing a bunch of stuff here.

Accessibility is a problem and assuming it is as bad as you say it is it really should be addressed, agreed.

But that's completely orthogonal to being hard to game. And the concerns the OP brings up are unrelated to accessibility and indeed read more about instructions on how to game HN more successfully, otherwise why bring the VCs and the 'levers' into it in the first place?

> It reads like “you probably want to game HN; stop doing so”.

YES.

> HN is completely unusable for people with vision impairments relying on assistive technologies.

For one, this is unrelated to allowing marketers to game the system.

For two, how much are you hyperbolizing there? I only ask because I was having a conversation in comments with a blind HN-er only like 3 days ago.

As a screen reader user who has an account since 2018 and >10k karma, I beg to disagree.

Could it be better? For sure. Is it in the bottom 10% of sites I've ever seen? Definitely not.

Please stop trying to use a group you're not a part of for your own political purposes, especially if you don't know what you're talking about.

While there is a lack of semantic HTML, "completely unusable" is an inappropriate exaggregation. At least I am pretty happy that HN is one of the last places on the internet that still work pretty well with a text browser like Lynx. I wonder, do you rely on accessibility, or are you just parroting things you read elsewhere?

Fighting spam is a benefit for everyone and it’s most definitely done on purpose behind closed doors.

Yes accessibility would be nice, I agree, but if I’m understaffed, provide free as in beer service where being on the first page is worth millions in marketing spend and being top 1 for a few hours is worth tens if not hundreds so I’m constantly under attack from everyone and their dog who have anything at all to sell, it’s going to be hard to prioritize other things.

…yeah I agree they should hire an intern or something to just fix this on slow burn.