Hn is a moderated community, and it's value partially comes from it's moderation. It's restricted to a set of topics, and if things get too out of hand whether it's a personal attack or just insanity, the comment is going to get removed.

Except you can view the dead comments. You can still see the removed stories. You have to opt-in to that, but it's just a checkbox in your profile. HN is moderated, but there is no censorship.

The issue with censorship is that it has to grow. You can't defend taking down say, videos about the Israel BDS movement, and not also take down videos about Free HK. Either the platform openly admits that it's biased or it has to keep growing what can't be discussed and inevitably that's going to start including content that everyone feels shouldn't be censored.