Here's my interpretation: When someone has a shitty public opionion, we force others to MAKE PUBLIC their opinions.
And because our society is so polarized, we don't talk about opinions or their nuances; we reduce them to binary views (it's possible they are but not always), we pick a side and we light our torches.
Some people do that, yes, but I'd argue most simply don't care enough.
Furthermore, consider that the opinion-like discourse is clearly performative. We all know what the correct virtue signaling looks like, and we know that we need to ruin every person not doing the correct virtue signaling.
So it's less of a plurality-of-opinion situation, and more of a direct-democracy situation: a lynch mob.
(Not saying it's good or bad btw -- not my circus, not my monkeys. Just dishonest to say we love some sort of plurality while doing this I think.)
Relatively speaking HN is an oasis compared to other platforms. Which makes me wonder, are there forums with an even higher quality than HN?
I think the biggest hurdle for something like that would be selecting and keeping enough like-minded moderators to enforce the quality.