Like this post. The "Ship in Distress" part of "Mark Zuckerberg's Yacht Refused to Help Ship in Distress" in the display text here is inaccurate, in a legally-significant way. (Was this the original headline text? I don't see any evidence of it, at least)
Or comments here, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49251495
The parent comment is just edgy pontification.
Yes, "it's expected" isn't always a defense, but your implication is wrong: More often than not, it is a defense (the most common format is "why are you surprised?"), and that applies here (otherwise, it makes no semantic sense in the parent's comment).
Regardless, why resort to petty insults? It hurts to see this on HN.
Now, you're trying to conveniently ignore the context of the post you replied to here [0].
> isn't always
> More often than not
I skimmed the rest and saw too many weasel words. Good luck.
Sure, of course the internet is chock-full of wrong articles or comments, either innocently or outright dishonestly.
If you are refuting those articles/comments, then reply to them (or at the very least mention them). You were commenting directly on an article that does not commit the specific sin you are lamenting. This is how shitposting begins.
This is like the classic internet fallacy: A story negatively painting X person/group appears (in this case, the story writer, rather than the story subject). Somebody says, "This is just another example of those people", and when confronted with the revelation that it is not an example of that, the reply is not "Whoops, sorry", but rather, "Well... they would do that, though."
It's how high-quality communities like HN erode.
Which is probably why it's now flagged off the front page.
You already provided the facts, and they want to pretend like there isn't a legal obligation to respond to a distress call and the Zuck hate clickbait was otherwise.
Honestly, Zuck haters should be the first ones to point this out so it doesn't distract from other criticism.
I only wanted to engage you with the idea that the "rude but not illegal" and "expected of yacht owners" lines are a common form of downplaying bad behavior (we see this all the time when people talk about the bad behavior of large businesses).
And to be clear, I'm not personally attacking Zuckerberg. I don't even know if what he did was actually rude! That's just the premise of your comment.