Like as I understand it the system here works because the users moderate each other in a way that will trigger automated action and eventually action from yourself or Tom. Shit post and people will flag your comment. Get flagged too much and you get throttled.

But if that first step doesn't happen because the user base has a parasocial relationship with another user and they consider them a celebrity then they're going to hold that user to a different standard than they do other users.

Which means they won't moderate them the same way and then the algorithmic escalation and moderator actions won't be triggered.

I agree that these aren't the kind of comments that would trigger a moderation comment, but then again, I didn't look too deeply at this particular user's comment list before I found some pretty meh ones.

It's not an issue that keeps me up at night either, I just started noticing it after enjoying reading certain comments from this user and finding other kinds of comments to be pretty sub-par and started pondering the strong difference between them.

The dichotomy between comments they'll make regarding something like aircraft linkages and control surfaces or whatever that I recall them making a few months ago which other uses wanted to nominate as a high quality comment and the all caps old man yelling at clouds type comments that I linked to is problematic for a site like HN but I also agree that there isn't an optimal solution for it.