HN will very happily brigade for little guys, too. Every few months there's a new "Stripe closed our account" thread that picks up a lot of steam.
Every once in a while it gets Stripe's attention and they fix it. Most of the time the torches burn for a few hours until someone researches the author and figures out they were building a gambling platform or something else explicitly against Stripe's ToS and the thread quietly dies out as people realize OP was just exploiting HN's visceral reactions.
That's not HN helping. That's because some Stripe employees actively browse HN, especially those threads pertaining to their company, looking to help.
Though some Googlers browse HN, I've never seen where they could actually help someone here - the company is too large and dispersed. Those Googlers are here for leasure, not business.
I agree it's not HN helping—I think those threads are one of the most toxic parts of this forum. As I said, most of the time HN gets out the pitchforks in support of someone who knows full well why they were banned.