Ask HN: Are HN comments automatically downvoted by algorithms?

Personally, I downvote destructive comments and flag harmful ones. My impression is that others do the same. I've never seen anything to suggest that there is algorithm beyond those that affect community members under shadow bans. My understanding is that people wind up in that state by hand, but I have no direct knowledge.

There are a lot of people on HN, and a lot of people with downvote privilege, and there are a lot of people who just generally downvote because they disagree with something.

Even if your opinion is completely positive, if people disagree, and a lot of people see it, you will get downvoted just because they disagree (and no one will reply to your comment to disagree, it's a drive-by-downvote).

There's also verification of this by HN mods: Several comment threads exist where they keep increasing the downvote threshold (from 300, to 400, to 500, and beyond). But it still doesn't solve the problem.

It's rather the upvoting of threads as well as their subthreads. Active threads move to the top.

There seems to be an algorithm which demotes some posters (at least one) voicing opinions unfavorable to YC.

EDIT: just got downvoted without any comment. I wonder if I am on the kill list as well.