"This is exactly why Trump won"

See the part of my comment you are replying to where I specifically stated that the motivation for all of this is that "Jethro doesn't vote the way I want him to". You've proven my point.

The censorious attitudes on HN were non-existent before Trump won in 2016. I know this for a fact. I've had my account on here since 2012, after 2 years of being just a reader.

Meanwhile, you overestimate how immune to misinformation and lies the average HN techy is. Just a few years ago, the majority of people on here believed, with utter conviction, that the bat-borne coronavirus lab in Wuhan had absolutely no connection with the bat-borne coronavirus epidemic that started in Wuhan and that only bigots and ignoramuses could draw such a conclusion. I experienced this whenever I brought up the blatantly obvious, common sense connection in these same comment threads in late 2020 or into mid 2021. The absolutely absurd denial of common sense by otherwise intelligent people was reminiscent of trying to talk to a religious fundamentalist about evolution while pointing at dinosaur fossils and having them continue to deny what was staring them in the face.