Oh boy - I have been here for 12 years or so, and I don't really agree with this take at all. Maybe I am biased, but I think the conversations here are more open and more frank than most (or any) other places on the internet.
If the system were honest and fair, the mods would have no reason to hide their behavior.
Now I have to be careful, I've posted 3 comments in the last hour and I'm running up against my rate limit since the mods have highlighted me as a troublemaker. Can't say too much exposing the secret system of moderation here, they don't like that.
So, how do you know? What is your objectively verifiable evidence that this secret system exists?
Or are you just referring to the editors' ability to kill a post that they deem to be against the site guidelines? They have that power, but it's not a secret.
Selective moderation is also a big problem on this platform. Rules only apply to certain groups of people, basically at dang's discretion.
The biggest problem with this platform is that there is no moderation log. The mod team works in an opaque manner, making it hard to prove or disprove the claims I was making. If we could just see a list of all comments dang had deleted, and the true vote count of each comment, we could all see exactly what the mod team was doing and be confident in its fairness.
That's obviously not the case though, and HN keeps this information from us to protect their image.