HN aggressively moderates hateful and harmful comments, so they’re often not seen before they get flagged or removed. I’ve personally reported enough comments t

HN aggressively moderates hateful and harmful comments, so they’re often not seen before they get flagged or removed. I’ve personally reported enough comments this year that I’m confident saying that some number of people who use threats of violence to silence those they disagree with are both reading and participating on HN, and so by the lurker principle, many more are reading HN but not behaving in that manner here. Thankfully, those few that participate are not the majority — but their perceived absence is the result of both peer pressure (via flags) and moderators (via bans) silencing their speech, not due to ‘we’re better than that here’.