Even 25 years ago, on Slashdot I could tell it not to show comments with less than a certain number of upvotes, and thus filter out a lot of the dross from busy conversations.
I can't do that on HN. I can do something like it on Reddit, although I know of no "expand all" functionality, but on HN it's all or nothing.
It has perfect functionality but doesn't waste your time by loading bloatware for 10 seconds.