AFTER EDIT: I guess I'm glad I asked, downvotes and all, because I see the link is to a source off HN, not to a statement from any of the HN moderators (which is what I was checking).
> "So already for the past week TSA stories have had an automatic penalty applied. Or more precisly, they've been autotagged as being political, which entails a penalty."
> "When anything gets over a certain number of flags, it shows up on a list that admins see. They decide either to kill it, mark it as political or whatever, or do nothing."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1934950
So, at least as of 3 years ago, HN both "autotags" and has admin driving tagging. Penalties are given to posts that have received particular tags.
Strictly speaking, "words in titles" may or may not be involved in that "autotagging", but given PG's history with content classification... I suspect it is.
I also appreciate an established name in HN pointing out that the linked article was not from a moderator. It points itself out quickly, but it's nice to know something is derived information before clicking.