It would be one thing if that was the only fluffy comment. The entire collection of top level comments is nothing but fluff, with only one or two exceptions. The vast majority of comments on this page are completely off topic. There is practically zero technical merit to any of the threads, even the on topic ones.
I think it was unfortunate that this generic landing page was chosen as the golden submission and other more specific and more technical submissions (such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14360653) were duped off the front page. If a more specific article had been chosen instead, we might have had a more focused technical discussion rather than domain name commentary and the same old non-specific privacy concerns discussed ad nauseam every day.
> it was unfortunate that this generic landing page was chosen
You know what, you're exactly right. Generic pages lead to generic discussion and that is uninteresting. We're well aware of that effect, so usually make a point of penalizing generic portal-style pages or changing the HN URLs to more substantive ones. For some reason we missed this case.
It's interesting as yet another demonstration of how reliable that effect is, I guess. Initial conditions have a huge impact on HN threads. First comment is another.
I think it was unfortunate that this generic landing page was chosen as the golden submission and other more specific and more technical submissions (such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14360653) were duped off the front page. If a more specific article had been chosen instead, we might have had a more focused technical discussion rather than domain name commentary and the same old non-specific privacy concerns discussed ad nauseam every day.