I think that the difference may be whether the comment portrays the person as the cat or the mouse, or an ally to either. For instance: the recent thread on st

I think that the difference may be whether the comment portrays the person as the cat or the mouse, or an ally to either. For instance: the recent thread on student protests in Iran which last I checked (before the discussion propelled the actual submission off of the front page) was teeming with tacit appeals for foreign intervention, plausibly by the most vocal critics of the most likely interventionists. Maybe not the best example for you. But I think it’s a matter of context. A comment is censurable on HN according to how it appears in relation to its more dominate and/or more well-received siblings. It also may help to consider submissions here as belonging to something like a decentralized subreddits; drawing crowds all familiar with an approved narratives to convene around, for or against respectively. The trick may be to strategically posit your offensive remarks where they’re least likely to be received as such.