If you enlarge the definition of sea lioning to include the GP's question, you've basically made it impossible/unreasonable to ever ask questions. I can't think of a worse thing to do in our current culture of outrage and jumping to assumptions. I'll take risking sea lioning any day over making assumptions and accepting information at face value - even if it's from experts.

I think the difference is that he's directing his question to us, and not to the person in question?

I think it's fair, in this day and age, to ask if there's corroborating evidence for the contents of a tweet/article.

Sea Lioning, I think, is a lot more about antagonizing/bullying a victim who is speaking up about about whatever act victimized them, while disguising your bullying as being a good-faith investigation into their claims. When it's actually in bad faith, and your intent is primarily to increase the "cost" to victims of bringing forth their complaints.

Asking people to substantiate their claims on HN is not "sea-lioning," it's like the whole point of the site. Most of us come here for educational discussion.

HN also doesn't follow you around. If you post here, people may ask you to back up your claims, and you are free to ignore them and/or stop visiting the site.

Genuinely curious: isn’t there a difference between sea-lioning (haranguing the person with questions that do not move the conversation forward) and asking for clarification on a point in order to engage with them in good faith? If so it’s hard to make that discernment from a single comment.

Yes I think there is based on intent of the question, whether it actually is just a clarification or an attempt to lead the conversation into a debate. That being said though, I feel like calling any disagreement Sea-Lioning might become the new way for people to dismiss any arguments against their opinions/ideas without actually having to provide valid thought behind their opinion/idea.

There is, but people have started using it as a catch-all defense so the conversation changes from whatever was initially said, to "stop harrassing me". It's the same tactics game developers use when they do something blatantly scummy, then start talking about how they're receiving death threats over what they did, that way they're seen as the victim.