Give me some good reasons for believing that a "slightly bad opinion" and "hate speech" can be easily confused and I'll be ready to rethink my position.
Questioning our own positions is the opposite of bigotry, after all.
Your claim was that even the simple accusation of "hate speech" should be taken at face value and be cause for introspection, seemingly regardless of the circumstances.
Now here you are asking for reasons before you reevaluate your own position when we claim you are in error. Do you not see the hypocrisy?
You are welcome to expect arguments before you change your mind. You can be "innocent until proven guilty". That's all the rest of us ask. Telling others to assume fault when you yourself do not is a rather poor way to argue.
The opinion of an independent adjudicator like the platform you're on with hopefully unbiased hate speech rules should be considered evidence in a way that the bad faith arguments of the person you're arguing with is not.
That is, I should not necessarily take your accusation of hate speech at face value, because you've proven to be willing to try and use it to win an argument. But if dang said that I was doing something that broke the rules, I would be more introspective. This is, yes, technically an argument from authority, but so is basically everything in the world of social dynamics.
So the burden of proof for you and the burden of proof for hacker news as a platform may be different, but that has nothing to do with me vs. you.
So I'll repeat what the other user said: if dang@ came along and asked you to stop engaging in hateful rhetoric, would you take a moment to introspect on that, or would you first reaction be to argue and demand proof?
Mine would be to try and figure out what he was referring to, and then probably to do less of it. And indeed, when chastised by him, that's more or less what I've done.
Questioning our own positions is the opposite of bigotry, after all.