I have since lost faith.
HN likes to masquerade as some sort of upscale establishment, high and above the petty squabbles of Eslewhere, but in the end this place too devolves into a predictable echo chamber just like the rest of them, when it comes to any topic on which people have varied opinions.
This is not a place for dissenting views (such as this comment). This community does not brook any disagreement, because this service is not designed for it.
This did not happen overnight; for more than a year I have been watching perfectly fine comments getting buried in the gray for not siding with the prevailing mob on divisive topics. Even neutral, soft-spoken stances get struck down.
One can now reliably predict what the majority of comments are going to be like, just by reading the title of a post.
I've brought this up several times with dang, but apparently you're not able to appreciate these problems until you try participating as a regular user.
And let's not even mention the awful UI design with its vendetta against eyes, low light and small screens.
HN is broken, and one of the major indicators of a broken service is a tone-deaf management who continues to insist that everything is Working As Intended.
There's a pandemic on. Voting has been a bit wonky this year, probably because of the pandemic. People are cranky and scared and yadda.
But normally HN is much more tolerant of dissent than most online spaces, assuming it's done right. Rants that call other members names or that implicitly or explicitly suggest "This will be downvoted because you are all bad people" or similar is not how to do that.