Users flagged it. Moderators never touched it or even saw it. Probably users flagged it because a closely related story was on the front page all day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21310867. Follow-up or copycat submissions aren't exactly dupes, but people read HN for topics they haven't seen recently, and HN basically never wants two front page submissions about the same thing.

Your comment breaks the site guidelines against insinuating astroturfing without evidence. A story getting flagged is evidence of nothing other than that users flagged the story. Admins conspiring to suppress it? that is pure imagination, and it's pretty nasty to imagine something about someone and then accuse them of being paid to do evil. The guidelines exist to prevent HN from degenerating that way, so please read and follow them when posting here from now on: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

So, you're telling me that watchdogs users (on a payroll I'll add) roam this site and flag anything that they don't like and that is OK for you. Super.

The post on front page was focusing on what a single scientist was saying. This particular scientist has been attacked and defamed repeatedly which in effect rendered _that_ post ineffective to base a serious conversation for that issue. TLDR, people (and keen watchdogs alike) were focusing on _him_ rather than the issue at hand. Which is why I posted the appeal, signed by numerous other scientists, so that the discussion won't focus on the strawman scientist and focus on what might be a hugely important public health issue.

Of course the watchdogs on duty flagged it immediately because it was much harder to attack and defame.

I've said it again. You have a problem in HN. Mobs and lone rangers and downvote armies. You might be innocent (as an admin) and try to let everyone speak but it is evident to me that nothing that _really_ matters can be discussed in this community. That is because things that _really_ matter hurt some big pockets or a few cretins stuck in their adolescent rigid worldviews. In any case the gist of it is that the rules of the site allow them to drown any voice they don't like in a form of public opinion manipulation.

So, thanks for the hospitality all these months. I think I've no business here.

There are no "watchdogs on duty" or "on a payroll". Users see submissions and flag ones that they think shouldn't be on HN.

In this case your submission was, though not the identical article, exactly the same topic as another submission which was one of the most prominent stories of the day (the third most, in fact: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-10-21). The natural place to add additional links and make the argument that discussion shouldn't center around a single researcher, would have been as a comment in that thread. Posting a new submission about amounted to a dupe, which fragments discussion, so there's an easy good-faith interpretation for why users might have flagged it. Note that the site guidelines ask people here to "Assume good faith." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). That's because the downsides of assuming bad faith are orders of magnitude worse for the site than the downsides of assuming good faith.