In other words: by perpetuating an unrelenting campaign of harassment and sea-lioning, reactionary defenders of the status quo have successfully convinced you that these topics are "controversial" rather than convincing you that they're assholes.

This is the argument to moderation, a popular logical fallacy in the cable news industry. This is the problem with HN; it positions itself as "disrupting" things, of doing these radical improvements using technology, but in reality it is a gigantic performance art piece about capitulating to entrenched power structures.