At least on Lemmy.world, it’s now visible when comments are removed. It’s not uncommon that I see multiple comments complaining about what the tankies are going to do and few to no removed comments. Given Lemmy.world is also the instance whose members I see gripe about tankies the most, I currently believe it’s just people using an out group to achieve some sort of personal goal, even if it’s just as simple as wanting to comment but not really having a lot to say.