No one associated with YC flagged this article; the mods didn't even see it. It was flagged by a large number of users. This was purely a community response, and others have already pointed out what is doubtless the reason. (edit: one of the flaggers was a YC alum from 14 years ago - I'm adding that for completeness, but it doesn't change the point)

> Some things are encouraged, eg being racist towards Chinese

I've poured countless hours into urging HN commenters to be more tolerant on China-related topics (as on all topics, but China-related ones have been common) and moderating and/or banning the users who won't. Here's a list that I put together for another user last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/chinamod. No one could read that history with even a glimmer of fair-mindedness and conclude that "racism towards Chinese" is "encouraged" by HN mods or anyone else at YC.

I've even had the honor of being "accused" (as if this would somehow be a bad thing) of being Chinese myself, because of how we moderate HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22608635). The funny thing is how similar that groundless accusation was to the groundless accusation you posted here. People simply make these claims up based on a small number (perhaps as small as 1, but we can be generous and say 2 or 3) data points they randomly run across and then misinterpret according to their pre-existing views. People with pro-XYZ feelings do this and conclude that the mods are anti-XYZ. People with anti-XYZ feelings do it and conclude that we're pro-XYZ. It's just projection, and works the same way in both cases. (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)