[dang]

If you want to make this kind of argument, you need a stronger basis than "So much worse than that, because they go online and simp for the company after doing it". I don't think it's a close call to refer to that as snark or flamebait.

> the second someone brings up Tesla-- Mods show up to enforce "civility" and pass out bans to anybody with 'wrong' opinions

This is illusory. It feels that way only because you have strong feelings about $topic and are more likely to notice the moderation cases that feel wrong to you (see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). In reality, the distribution is more or less random. We have zero interest in moderating Tesla topics or any $topic more than any other, and we don't care what your or anyone else's $opinion is.

Literally the only thing we care about is people posting in the intended spirit of the site: thoughtful, substantive, curious conversation, as outlined in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

If you had expressed your opinion in that way, I'd never have replied; and if you had expressed the opposite opinion in the same way, I'd have replied the same way. As a matter of fact I have no clue what your opinion even is.

As for "civility" - we haven't used that word in many years and it doesn't reflect how we think about moderation.