Oh yes. HN has always been a moderated/curated/whatever-term-you-prefer site. Many past explanations can be found through these links:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
(I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23294048 to prevent the top comment from being too distracting.)