I mean the upstream comment is basically saying don't trust clicking any links on the Internet--even on a site that presumably weeds out really dodgy stuff quickly. Indeed, not using the Internet is a solid, if rather extreme, security process to follow.

I wrote it, and that’s not what it’s saying

HN as a separate entity has practically no value, it could just be reddit.com/r/hackernews and it'd be practically the same.

reddit doesn’t have dang

The thing about Reddit is that it has greater "discoverability" through search, profiles and algorithmic "hot" pages, so communities like that inevitably become swamped with low quality posts. There's a few niche subs that just degenerated into posting photos of purchases that arrived in the mail today instead of actually discussing the use of the tools.