It's a forum, a bit like a subreddit, so sort of a social media site, but not an archival feed. Content is posted by users, and includes many posts of "news", but also many other posts that gratify curiosity or generate interesting discussion. Posts and comments can be voted on to collaboratively curate what is here. The focus is generally tech, software, startups, etc. Mainstream news is mostly off-topic.

It's run by the startup accelerator YCombinator, and it often has launches, job ads etc. from YC companies. YC employs a professional moderator (user name dang), and pays for hosting, so they don't sell ads on it. In "return", YC gains startups from the community here.