You can see [dead] comments if you enable the show-dead flag in your profile. Also, you can vouch a [dead] comment to revive it. (You need to have a minimal amount of karma for this.)
And if you see something egregious, you can send an email to the mods hn@ycombinator.com
I've had show-dead on for a long time, and I use custom CSS [1] which even makes dead posts stand out more.
The downvote abuse here is ubiquitous. The mods don't care, I supposed because 'pg decreed long ago that downvoting for disagreement is acceptable. The finger-wagging of the invisible hand is working as intended.
And if you see something egregious, you can send an email to the mods hn@ycombinator.com
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