If the link is bad we’ll fix it with votes, not admin actionz
If we tried to go by upvotes alone, we'd end up with the same small number of hot topics and sensational controversies dominating the front page. This is the weakness of the upvoting system. There wouldn't be any room for the unpredictable sorts of stories that best fulfill the site mandate of intellectual curiosity.
I know it's irritating when moderators do something you don't like, but in case it helps at all, I think the irritation is pretty evenly distributed across the different subgroups who populate this place.
As for the OP, you're not going to get much support from the community here if you think that we should have left a hard-paywalled link on the front page. That's no doubt why users heavily flagged your comment (mods didn't touch it, btw, and I've unkilled it now).