For me, absolutely. And the fact that it’s text-only helps enormously too. The way I interact with HN is fine to me. I skim the posts once a day and read maybe one or two.
I think it's also important that HN doesn't have infinite scrolling. It's old-school: 30 items per page, click at the bottom to go to the next page.
I made a rule for myself that I would never go past page 2 of HN. So, each morning, I see 60 items, and if none of them interest me, then I just move on with my day. I think that's why I never became addicted.
The rate at which content ends up on the front page is also slower than your ability to consume it. So even if you do keep clicking, you end up on yesterday's links you've already read.
If you didn’t have that rule would you go past page 2? Frankly I just don’t find HN articles as cheaply and quickly mentally palatable as other sites. The content here is usually more cognitively demanding, so I don’t end up scrolling.
OK so in this comment, and child comments, a number of hypotheses are mentioned for why HN is fine:
* HN is text-only
* HN lacks infinite scroll
* HN adds new content slowly
* HN is cognitively demanding
My guess is that these factors are most important. If you held them constant and added a recommendation engine in HN, I doubt HN would become considerably more addictive.
