[jb1991]

I don't see how my comment above could be interpreted as any sort of personal attack or tar-and-feather behavior towards the person I replied to. This is a discussion about a bad business practice at a major company, and that is what these concerns are voiced against, not any one individual person who is acting as a spokesperson.

[dang]

I interpreted it that way based on lots of past experience with the dynamic I wrote about upthread. I believe you that you didn't intend it to come across as hostile! The problem is that intent doesn't communicate itself, especially in short critical comments. The way I usually put it is "the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate" (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)

I apologize for using your comment as a place to hang a whole generic thing about mobs and whatnot—I certainly didn't mean it about you personally (or even your post) - it's a shared group phenomenon for sure, and I could have made that clearer.