HN is a different beast. We link to others' content instead of rehosting and claiming credit (and ad revenue) for it, and much of the value of HN comes from the original content we post in the comment threads. This site doesn't even vaguely resemble spammy content rehosting sites.
I was being a bit cheeky. I agree that HN is different than the some of the blatantly awful aggregation sites. HN uses only headlines, gives attribution, etc. I don't buy the community argument though - lots of sites take linked headlines, snippets and degraded images and package it up with a comment system. Aggregation - community driven, algorithmic, etc. - is still aggregation.
