You don't need to take my word for it. The thread was sitting at #3 at 01:05 UTC. It was then manually adjusted by a moderator, or automatically adjusted due to flagging, or automatically adjusted due to the flamewar detector, to #26 at 01:10 UTC. http://hnrankings.info/6308017/ Also, mods are typically quick to bury stuff that they feel wouldn't be good for HN, especially during primetime hours. This post was #1-#3 for several hours, so this leads me to suspect this thread was either automatically adjusted by the flamewar detector or penalized due to flagging, and that a moderator had already seen this and decided not buried it. Also, for the stuff they truly do not want on HN, they bury the story by adjusting its gravity to be infinite, e.g. it's not merely moved to page 2 or page 3 but to >page 10. And this story wasn't buried.

Yes, I was sillysaurus. I was hellbanned for posting controversial comments and then deleting them. Now I make controversial comments and don't delete them.