I have the impression from this thread that this thread was public (as in, would work if you just linked to it from something like HN) earlier, and now it isn't?

Obviously, deliberately hiding a negative story on our Discourse is a little like deleting a bad tweet; it's just going to guarantee someone captures and boosts it. We have a lot of flaws! But not knowing how the Internet works probably isn't one of them. No idea what's going on here, still trying to work it out.