Yeah, I think your criticism is appropriate and hardly "off-topic" when it's a direct reply to a comment. The replies to your post did degenerate into a bit of a shit show, but that's not your fault.

Indeed, but the goal of HN is to be interesting, and every thread turning into anger about the same four or five things is not interesting. I'm sure that wasn't your intent, but it's the default trend regardless of intent, so there needs to be a countervailing factor. Such discussions are predictable and achieve little except to get participants' juices flowing.

Both your comment to the GP and your comment here make uncharitable assumptions that convert immediately into anger. Please don't do that when posting to HN. It corrodes the civil discourse that we're trying for.