I think the idea of SN is that whatever moderation happens is done by the community itself in the form of zaps, without any "official" guidance. There aren't any users who have the power to remove your posts or comments or prevent you from posting or commenting.

As far as I know, there aren't any rules. (I imagine super illegal things like making threats or such may get removed, but so far, the community hasn't had to deal with that, I don't think).

if a user tells you to leave, you are free to ignore them. If you pay the posting fee, you get to post. It's true that others aren't as likely to see your posts and comments if a lot of people downzap them. It's also true, though, that you can't force people to like you.

However, if you consistently put out interesting writing, people will notice and will zap it, and I think there will be more of them than the people who downzap.

My sense is that you should keep experimenting with different types of writing. When I first started using SN, I rarely commented on other people's work and mostly tried to write long-form articles. That may be a good way to start. Jumping into comments is more difficult in my mind because there is a wider range of topics and you might not know very much about them.