I support Hacker News moderating itself however it chooses. However, if we are looking at it as a moderation model for large, open, non-editorial platforms (Youtube, Facebook) -- which I believe should all be covered under public accommodation law -- it clearly fails. And even if when we are looking at ostensibly neutral, publicly-orientated sites like newspaper comment boards, it fails.
Hacker News moderation is not appealable, not auditable, does not have bright line rules, and there are no due process rights. It simply does not respect individual rights.
So while this moderation method succeeds for Hacker News, and perhaps should become the model for small private sites, we should not try to scale it internet-size companies. Platform companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter) and backbone companies (ISPs, Cloudflare!) need a different set of rules geared towards protecting individual rights and freedoms instead of protecting a community.
Yep. After eight years on the site I finally had a comment removed, and my response to dang to discuss it was completely ignored. Made me feel dumb for even trying.
It's also possible that I saw it and was too exhausted to look back through all the flagged comments in the thread, identify which ones were explaining how AMP works, and see if they had been flagged correctly. That takes a ton of energy, which is not always available when the rest of the site is clamoring for attention and in varying degrees of onfireness. One thing you can do to increase the odds of getting a specific response is to include specific links to the post(s) you're worried about—that makes it an order of magnitude easier. I certainly appreciate your intention to defend fellow users who are being mistreated.
But I think if I had seen your comment I would have replied at least to say that I believe you that your intention wasn't to downvote-bait.