I encourage you to apply occam's razor here. I don’t think any political entity has any interest in controlling what individuals post on a tiny website like HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=29684814
> I don’t think any political entity has any interest in controlling what individuals post on a tiny website like HN.
The comment boiled down to:
"VICE isn't what I'd call the most reputable/unbiased source. I'd encourage everyone to do their own research/make their own decision. Here are a bunch of links of people walking around the same area, and it looks nothing like what is cut together from that VICE episode."
I just wanted to call out this very odd behavior. I don't see HN as a place where people who speak objectively + respectfully get silenced, generally.
So using the razor, I think we can conclude what happened.
User makes a new throwaway account to spread easily disproved information
Other users downvote the misinformation
HN autoflags the comment to protect against preceived-spam.
Although you are right to question what you see. It is never wrong to take a second to ask “what’s going on here?”