What motivated my opinion is not just whether my comment deserved flagging or not (and I see a lot of comments that may be more deserving of it by the logic you quoted.) It's the fact that it got downvoted and flagged almost instantly.
A level discussion means one where criticism is allowed. It doesn't mean a discussion in which everyone gives a white-glove treatment to yet another useless chatbot, while ignoring the alt-right elephant in the room out of an abundance of courtesy.
According to to them, getting your comment grayed out means its still technically there, so you aren't getting censored by the bandwagon.
They fail to understand that graying out your comment signals to the cursory viewer that it is a low quality comment. Whereas often it is not. You might comment something that is factually right, but goes against HN's vibe du jour, so you get one or two downvotes, and then the larger group starts mass-clicking ▼ without any critical thought.
A much more healthy system would just be sorting comments by vote activity and percentage-positive. It would still make controversial comments slightly less visible, but because there is not explicit signal of quality, no bandwagon effects.
Even if 90% of users are lurkers it doesn't mean they don't know how it feels to be downvoted and can't emphasize.
Good comments are rarely downvoted disproportionately on HN. Perceived censorship "by the bandwagon" just means it isn't a good comment.
It just means you said something that goes against the grain of the larger part of HN. Nothing more.
But as stated, you people are inconvincible.
What gets downvoted are the really bad takes with lazy arguments.
I have provided alternative reasoning on why your comment was flagged, which doesn't rest on the former assumption.
> It's the fact that it got downvoted and flagged almost instantly.
HN is a popular site, and you might have commented during peak hours. I think that is a more reasonable explanation.
In my experience, HN is generally anti-Musk, so it is odd for me to see someone asserting the opposite.
> In my experience, HN is generally anti-Musk
I agree with this. I found the early moderation on this comment section to be suspiciously pro-Musk on a site that usually isn't.
They were not. You were downvoted because you broke the rules of site, therefore there's no evidence of Elon Muskery. Try to have a discussion without breaking the rules first.