I think people may disagree with you on what constitutes a tangential annoyance. Is there any point at which the format is, in fact, a legitimate annoyance?

tangential and legitimate are not mutually exclusive. the majority of the grievances are infact the latter; they are legitimate

what makes them also the former is that (and surely the reason for the rule) is that because these grievances are so commonly expressed when links are shared they create a near constant 'noise' in the signal to noise of each discussion, with signal being the idea or message intended to be shared by the poster rather than the medium it arrived in

a better way to discuss the tangent or the medium would be by submitting its own HN post. that way theres a better S/N ratio for everything

example: scientific breakthrough is shared on fbook

signal: any discussion about that breakthrough or its Nth order effects on anything

noise: any discussion about the fbook website, walled gardens, zark muckerburg, anything that would be on any link for that site regardless of the message inside the medium

those discussions arent illegitimate, they are better served by targeted discussion on their posts like..

some websites are stylized the point of illegibility

fbook website dark patterns

popups make alt F4

..rather than increasing noise across the whole of HN. this rule is closely related to another site rule: "use the best possible interpretation of the parent comment" because it too is a rule that is in place as an attempt to steer toward "curious discussion" (high S/N ratio)

( i will agree in this case the illegibility warrants a comment chain, holy smokes! )