The use of quotation marks on the Internet (especially on Internet discussion forums) has become non-standard, and I can see how it could be confusing. I think on HN that we tend to use italics or email-style

> block-quoting

to indicate direct quotations of posts or user comments.

Quotation marks on forums like HN tend to be used either to mark dialogue (things spoken out loud) or to mark paraphrased or "hypothetical" thoughts. This is different from the use of quotation marks in formal English writing, as described by Wikipedia [1]. Here, the quotation marks are used to separate the "paraphrased thought" from the rest of the sentence.

I'm actually finding it hard to describe exactly how quotation marks are used this way on the Internet; it's something I've just developed a "feel" for.

There's more discussion of this phenomenon here. http://metatalk.metafilter.com/23184/Should-we-keep-quotatio...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_marks_in_English