Perhaps you've been seeing it more for some reason, or it has seemed more aggressive to you for some reason, but I can tell you that the way we moderate HN's front page hasn't changed in many years.

It's clear to me now that this case was a moderation mistake. We make them sometimes (alas), but that's also been true for many years. Moderation is guesswork. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...