I usually come to HN from Front page, because the discussions are often as good (if not better) than the original link. However, my useage pattern is to peruse

I usually come to HN from Front page, because the discussions are often as good (if not better) than the original link. However, my useage pattern is to peruse the top articles, then switch to New Having said that, HN isn't ad driven and is more a descendant of message boards. So the incentives driving the curation mechanism are not personalized, but guided (as far as I can tell) purely by user engagement. Considering the good quality of HN's readership, and that there don't seem to be any (few?) bots or influencers what floats to the top tends to be worthwhile. Can't say the same for Twitter, and most definitely not FB.