It's hard to see it as anything but algorithmic considering that an algorithm is deciding what you see. It doesn't matter if everyone is also seeing the same thing.
By the definitional you are using pretty much every feed presented on a website is an algorithmic feed, making the term "algorithmic feed" useless since it could simply be replaced with "feed".
What "algorithmic feed" means in most discussion and publications is a feed that is personalized for the individual users based on their known or inferred interests and their past interactions.
The algorithm that is deciding what you see is simply <things submitted by other humans> + <voting on those things by other humans>. There's no per-user content customisation and profiling to drive engagement. And hn has an optional "no procrastination" feature that is provided to mitigate excessive engagement.
"The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.
"Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action."
Pretty obvious and vague overview. Obviously the weights are the important part that is missing.
I don't know why you're trying to argue that this isn't an algorithmically driven social news feed website with an addictive homepage. It's exactly what the NY state law is targeting.
