Don't quote me on that but it's pretty crude: if it receives N upvotes in a short amount of time, it's promoted to the frontpage quite quickly. If it takes two hours to get the same number of upvotes, it probably gets lost in the neverending ocean of /new.
So it's basically a game of pure chance, a topic that's not too niche, a topic that one upvotes without even reading, and/or good clickbait technique.
HN's algo optimises for popularity, rather than meaty content.
So it's basically a game of pure chance, a topic that's not too niche, a topic that one upvotes without even reading, and/or good clickbait technique.
HN's algo optimises for popularity, rather than meaty content.