https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator
Posts critical of oligarchy often shoot to number 1, then magically disappear from the homepage. It's a moderation decision.
"The revolution will not be televised."
I wrote about it in 2017:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14468554
The hypocrisy is - to me, at least - evident: you can't claim to be 'improving the world' according to your own vision of what that world should look like without serious consideration of the political angle. At the same time this is precisely the fig leaf many of the biggest politically influential companies hide behind. Flock, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX and many others make their bread and butter out of various aspects of the surveillance state and they wield their political clout like every other weapon in their arsenal. Having a forum like HN question your choices in life can't be easy. So the flag button is a simple way to get rid of any personal doubts.
edit: I just re-read that thread, it is really interesting to do so in the light of the present day political climate and the upcoming elections. Also interesting how the view on Elon Musk changed over the years.
HN's system of treating flagging as a mega-downvote doesn't help, but ultimately I don't think they are putting that much weight on the scale themselves.
Keep in mind that Start-up School featured Musk, Zuckerberg and Altman, that Altman at some point ran YC and that they're investors in Flock. All of these guys use their money to influence politics and legislation, I think it is safe to assume that there is a link, even though we don't know how much of a link there is, just like it is safe to assume that both Tom and Dan are doing their level best to keep HN working despite an onslaught of trash. None of these are mutually exclusive. But I really think it is a step too far to assume that they put their thumb on the scale in an active way.
Quoting tptacek from your link: “Politics often literally prevents us from discussing technical stories, by forcing us to wade through banal political detritus to get to the comments that have anything to do with the technical issues.”
HN guidelines make it clear: “Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.”
It may be that there are politics in everything, but that doesn’t mean we need to discuss those politics here. Especially because those politics usually drown out the curiosity. Curiosity is what makes HN interesting for so many