As per your edit, yes. That’s my point. Also, I remember a link in a comment (!) to a tweet praising AOC being voted down very quickly, for no apparent reason. Yes. I do think there’s a concentrated effort to influence content here.
* I don’t see that I’ve used stupid anywhere. I’m not commenting in order to persuade anyone, and it’s not a knee jerk reaction. It’s raising awareness to something that might be a thing on HN.