Regular HN users have flagged the comments, since obviously they're against the convention here. I've emailed the founders to ask them to call off their friends/teammates/etc.

People who don't know HN's rules often try to "help" in this way. I try to tell everyone that it doesn't help, it hurts! but it's hard to get the word out.

(Edit: forgot to mention that the comments disappeared because HN users flagged them enough to make them [dead]. You can see [dead] comments if you want to, by turning on 'showdead' in your profile. That's also in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)