A long, long time ago, that's how it tried to work. Long before they introduced subreddits, and before the signal/noise ratio made PG want to create HN. Gettin

A long, long time ago, that's how it tried to work. Long before they introduced subreddits, and before the signal/noise ratio made PG want to create HN. Getting better recommendations was even presented as the reason why you should upvote/downvote posts. But recommendation engines are very hard. Just look how poorly Amazon's work, despite its central role in corralling gigantic amounts of cash, the manpower and the raw talent that Amazon possesses. Reddit's smart customized home page wasn't better than the generic one. Eventually, multiplying subreddits and letting people [un]subscribe to them solved the problem better than going all AI. As for fighting voting brigades, I believe they continuously work very hard on this, but rely on secrecy to keep their measures effective.