Seconding the frustration. The best comment in this entire thread is [dead]. Anyone browsing with showdead set to no (and anyone browsing without logging in) will never see this content, and it's incredibly unjust as--in this case especially--it's something everyone should read.
Thank you for pointing out that there's a dead comment worth reading. I turned showdead on, and it absolutely was.
I just want to restate what jen_h said: Everyone should turn on showdead and read that comment. In addition to the comment being comprehensive, they also claim to have worked for the NSA. If that's true, then they have a unique and important perspective on this issue.
Comments from brand-new accounts posting from Tor IPs get killed by default, because of past abuses by trolls.
When someone lets us know about them, we unkill good comments that should obviously not be dead. Since there are too many posts for anyone to see them all, we rely on all of you to help us. The reliable way to do that is by emailing a link to hn@ycombinator.com. General complaints are less likely to reach us, for the same reason that the original problem probably didn't.
We have a plan that I'm optimistic will greatly improve this situation. It involves turning most of this moderation, including what's [dead] vs. not, over to the community. But we don't know yet when we'll be able to implement it.
