Isn't it a common misconception that flagged/dead comments are because of moderators? Dead comments happen automatically if enough people flag it[0].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173836

Moderators aren't doing that, other than by having banned accounts in the past, which makes future comments [dead]. Users are doing the rest.

I think we might have banned a couple of accounts in this thread, but there would be a comment there clearly saying so.