But apart from those it is true that low effort comments and jokes do get downvoted and discussion is much more interesting than anywhere else on the internet imo
I think that's because HN is smart and doesn't just allow a fresh account go on a downvoting spree. It seems so obvious in retrospect but so underutilized.
There's a lot of debate over whether we should have dislikes/downvotes on modern social media, but it seems strange that the Slashdot mentality of "you need to earn the downvote" seems to have only spread to here and to the "answerHub" styles of forum (wikis, StackOverflow). I remember one interesting feature of Voat (back when that was making waves) on how it limited votes per day and was criticized for it, but I think simply applying that limit to downvotes would have fixed many issues there. It seems ideally you want to encourage as much positive feedback as possible, but require a little friction for negative feedback.
Ehhhhh I'm not sure I'd say smart, just that low effort trolling or manipulation is harder. Plenty of obvious sock puppets and ideological hacks, and the simplified text system makes it easier in a way.
Like, the standby of "repost last weeks stuff, and then copy-paste comments from previous threads about it to get upvotes" works. You just have a 500 karma lead time.
"Marketing and Propaganda works, even if you understand how marketing and propaganda works"
One-liner trivialisms and cheap baiting usually gets flagged here, not upvoted regardless of the topic, which is a very positive thing. I am very grateful to the site's admins and users for this lovely place, it's truly a unique thing.