Confused with legacy knockout code. Can't tell if it's commented out or not

Question

Straight forward am I not new to knockout (some experience with ko 3.5) or html. I'm working on a project (ko 2.1.0) with a lot of legacy code and I am seeing a lot of code like this:

        <!-- ko if: displayLoading -->
    <img class="loader icon-align-center" src="~/Content/img/loader.gif" />
    <!-- /ko -->

Is this open and closing knockout tags commented out, or are they taking effect? Thanks for helping!