Just to be clear, [flagged] on a submission means users flagged it, not moderators. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Users flagged your submission (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27638871), then someone else reposted the article. We turned off flags on the latter.

Since yours was the earliest submission of the article, we'd normally have preferred to restore that one, but by the time we saw it that thread was such a wretched tire fire that it was unsalvageable. I explained that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27646075.

Generally it would be best not to rush to dramatic conclusions like "So the X is ok while the Y is Z?" without having all the relevant information. It makes for dramatic internet comments, but they're nearly always wrong.