Odd, maybe it's a quirk of the harmonic app, as I can see a normal comment now. Please ignore my previous reply.

I believe @dang has addressed this before. You see it when someone has configured a "delay" (see the input field at the bottom of your settings page [0]) which is an integer value representing the number of minutes before which your comment is "published" (visible to other users) - it's meant to be a short window of time where you can edit your comment before anyone has seen it. Once the delay has expired, other users will see the comment.

I've personally never observed it, but I use the HN website, which I think just doesn't render the comment during the delay period. IIRC, you'll see the asterisks when viewing comments in alternative clients that fetch them from the API.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user

Thank you very much for the explanation, that makes sense.

I'm not sure what you're referring to, on my screen it's a normal comment lamenting that the quality of reddit will continue to decline after they IPO