I’ve been on HN for 10+ years and articles are certainly flagged when they don’t match the zeitgeist.

Anything discussing controversial social topics is nuked. Which would explain the sheer panic and replies to dang: it must be truly terrible to not be able to make undesirable stories disappear instead of having to refute them. :-/

In the end this story doesn’t really present any ironclad proof and should be easy to point that out. Except that would open a discussion which could make the EU and US look quite poorly…