This does not match my experience. One of the reasons /s exists is because it’s much harder to read the intent of a written paragraph than the intent of someone speaking directly to us.

The hallmarks of sarcasm are subtle, and come in a few forms - sometimes it’s intentional emphasis on a particular word, sometimes it’s a quizzical look or raised eyebrow, etc.

But at least in my experience, I can usually tell when someone is being sarcastic in person, but it gets harder and harder to tell on the Internet.

I read GP's reply as a sarcastic one, and that they intentionally omitted the /s just to prove how hard sarcasm actually is to detect through text.

Hah, I think you are right. I bit hard, and maybe helped them prove their point.

Exactly. Also it's different when you are talking to one person vs 1000s of people. Even when it is obvious, 0.1% of readers will read it just a little to quickly and get confused. Given that "/s" makes it more obvious, the intentional omission of it is intentionally requiring more effort of the readers.

There are times and places when one might want to make the readers work harder, but HN comments doesn't seem to qualify.