I'm not a moderator but FWIW: This link is regarding a technical exploit of an IT system.

Whether the goal of this exploit is profit, blackmail, political, activism, curiosity, etc -- there is nonetheless definitely a technical/IT angle that makes it interesting for visitors like myself.

I imagine HN wanted to protect it's community from something they viewed as tangential to their focus but possibly highly vitriolic in content (to the degree that they influenced the submission, which I'm not sure the level of). Alternatively, it could have been a community self-policing, by flagging articles that they thought were poisonous, or that were viewed as promoting misinformation (do the degree that happened. I haven't followed this closely, but that seems to be a common occurrence shortly after a disaster).

I may have missed something but the one comment I saw from dang was that any flagging of stories about the Orlando events was done by users, not mods.

You can't see a difference between hackers talking about a hacking story and hackers talking about a shooting story, or are you just being facetious?

You've posted comments like this repeatedly. Please don't post any more of them. If you missed my earlier response, it's at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11890119.

Even Reddit had "troubles" discussing the Orlando shootings.

I think the upcoming election creates an environment amongst many media that downplays certain subjects that may propel mr. Trump into the White House.

The big attacks in France made it to HN frontpage though:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10562679

Prince was a powerful creative figure and a direct inspiration to many hackers. He was also a technology pioneer, one of the first to take multimedia seriously and see how it could be combined with art.

If you're ignorant of all this I can't help you. Put the pieces together yourself.

This kind of pointless drivel is why those threads need to be nuked.