Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? You've done it so often that I've started to wince when I see your username.
This has nothing to do with your views; I don't have any idea what they are and haven't read the context in this thread. I just saw this comment because it was flagged, and I recognize that this happens a lot with your account. That's not cool and not what this site is for.
I don't think it was a flamewar comment at all, but I do believe all this, including this style of moderation is really just shutting up honest productive discussion, and essentially translating to "don't post things that disagree with the majority opinion". I believe this sort of flagging and moderation exacerbates the echo chamber effect.
I don't remember what your views are on any of these topics but I'm pretty sure plenty of HN users express views similar close to yours while remaining within the site guidelines: thoughtful, respectful to others, substantive. You don't need snark, swipes, or putdowns—editing them out makes comments better, not worse.
I'm not quite approaching 50 yet, but I am getting there. What I can tell you is that the reason for some older folk's views on new trends is not that they're generally behind times, it's that with more life experience you have seen trends come and go, and you're actually in a slightly better position to judge the baloney factor of novel things.
That is not to say that this is _always_ the way things are, of course, because everybody is not the same. But that goes both ways: like you say, there are tons of people who "get" newer concerns likes the ones you mentioned.
For many things, keeping up-to-date and at least having some opinion is what's important to align with some subset of the companies out there. Otherwise you have no culture to even fit to and align with nobody.
Being too keen on the current trends might make someone a bad culture fit, too. For some projects, social upheavals are either irrelevant, or a distraction.
If you're in the time range to edit your comment, there is time to actually delete your comment instead of making a passive agressive edit. I feel that simply invites more in-fighting, with less context.
I didn't have a delete button, only an edit button.
Also I wasn't trying to be passive aggressive, I think it's worth leaving a trail of instances of when "agree with the masses or shut up" happen on HN.
I see. I think what I didn't know was that you can't delete a comment once someone replies to you. Like, I can't delete the comment you just replied to, but there are older comments I can delete.
>I think it's worth leaving a trail of instances of when "conform with the masses or shut up" happen on HN.
without context, that trail doesn't lend much weight. That's what makes the sentiment feel passive aggressive. "deleting evidence" so to speak, gives the implication that the comment in question wouldn't be a universally agreeable one to begin with, even outside of the hivemind.
By deleting your comment you're depriving people of the chance to evaluate whether the downvotes really are an echo chamber or a reasonable reaction to reprehensible statements. If you're confident that what you wrote was reasonable, and HN's reaction unreasonable, it'd be a lot better to leave the comment up.