I really don't see any of grayed out comments in this thread as toxic, leave alone as highly toxic. There are some lame jokes and one-liners, but they could simply be put at the bottom of the page without a slap on the face that is the gray color. Comment authors can see their negative scores and that's a signal enough for them to mend their ways, don't you think?
Oh, I didn't mean that any of the comments in this thread were toxic. I meant that HN had a systemic problem with toxic comments that badly needed addressing, and this downvote change is one of the ways we addressed it.
As for this thread, the faded-out comments I'm currently seeing are not toxic, but they also don't seem like good HN comments (defined as: substantive and civil) to me either. People can reasonably disagree in these cases—that's why we're encouraging the corrective upvote as a community practice.
I really don't see any of grayed out comments in this thread as toxic, leave alone as highly toxic. There are some lame jokes and one-liners, but they could simply be put at the bottom of the page without a slap on the face that is the gray color. Comment authors can see their negative scores and that's a signal enough for them to mend their ways, don't you think?