It doesn't matter if you have used them in this thread or not. An account of your age and your disposition should not have access to automated moderation tools, period.
Moderation via easily gamified populism is the worst kind of moderation.
Because the leftists flagging and downvoting everything they disagree with in this thread are clearly exemplars of excellent user moderation? Knock it off.
This is a contradiction. There's no such thing, only shades of bad, and HN has about the worst possible implementation.
For what it's worth, I didn't flag or downvote you. YC is seemingly fine with your behavior, and I've seen much worse out of people who have been here longer. I'd rather your mask-off rants be out in the open than swept under the rug.
Moderation via easily gamified populism is the worst kind of moderation.