That's a bad falsehood to spread, since it undermines users' faith in this community. The post was flagged because users flagged it. No one at YC censored it or ever would. The only thing moderators did to this post was unkill (i.e. reopen) the thread after the user flags were enough to kill (i.e. close) it.

HN moderators are strictly instructed to moderate the site less, not more, when a post says something critical of YC or a YC-funded startup. With a post like this one, we would normally have edited the baity title and downweighted the post for being a rant. But because the rant was against a YC startup, we did neither.

Such a policy doesn't stop people from accusing us falsely, but it does let us answer the accusations in good conscience. I couldn't imagine moderating HN without that.

I agree, not sure why this was flagged. The title is clickbait, but it seems this guy genuinely does hate hackerrank. fair enough.

Because its bad PR for hacker rank. That's why it was flagged.

Ironically often any PR is good PR. So many people who otherwise would not hear about hackerrank will now hear about it and many will use it regardless.

Possibly because I'm brand new (I'm not, I'm a very long time lurker and one time failed YC applicant).