Shallow dismissals can be an indication of a knee-jerk reaction, potentially based on existing biases and/or life experiences, as opposed to the kind of rational examination that makes HN enjoyable.
The fact that they're disallowed on Hacker News changes the tone of conversation here significantly, relative to other social media; comments that stop and make the reader think -- preferably with supporting references and at-minimum-plausible arguments -- are valued, and the resulting perception of the community by participants is one of an intelligent, well-mannered collegiate environment (with healthy competition). In other words, the kind of surroundings that have traditionally been associated with long-standing centres of education.
Whether that perception is accurate (or desirable, honestly) is, I'd argue, up for debate. As would be whether the use of the term 'hacker' itself has diverged between its origins[1] and the context in which it's used here.
No: it wasn't a knee-jerk reaction; this company appears to be awful and given their repeated behaviour, this seems like standard practice for them. I do not dismiss the hard work and ingenuity of the people who developed the feature -- I'm sure it was challenging and rewarding as they saw it -- but I don't believe that "hard work", "impressive work" and "good work" are always overlapping elements in a venn diagram.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html