[flagged]
I know it's fun internet time to play sinister speculation, but if anyone wants to know what's actually happening, all they have to do is ask.
Edit: I mean about anything happening on HN. Suspicious deaths, I can't help with.
> This comment was, even though it has 8 points, moved from the top of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39674829 to the lowest level here below 0 points. The order of comments in the original thread has also been reversed. It has to be said that this is a m...dishonest cover-up. Probably the most importantly for HN users, it proves that the order of comments can be changed by the moderators, not by the order of points. For example, the same operation could be performed in the same thread to produce the same result. This neatly matches the strange behavior often seen on HN. Oh, this comment may be deleted for going too deep.
> Also, with this move, the shadowban to this thread has been lifted and this thread is now back on the top page. The previous ranking was page 3.
You can verify this for yourself by enabling showdead in your profile which will let you see the full text of all comments from all posters even if they are flagged or dead.
As hayst4ck pointed out, your parent comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39676467 was flagged by users. When enough users flag a comment, it gets killed—but not deleted. Anyone with 'showdead' turned on in their profile can see all the killed comments.
We can only guess why users flag things, but most likely it's because you're posting dramatic off-topic claims that experienced HN readers find tedious, because they've seen so many and know there's no substance to them.
I have confirmed that the text of the comment has been replaced by [flagged] and is no longer readable. It's just sophistry to say that the text was only deleted and the comment was not deleted.
I wonder if you're using a third-party app to read HN, because if you're using a web browser, you should not be seeing just [flagged]. I unkilled your comment when I posted my last reply.
> I unkilled your comment when I posted my last reply.
This?
If a reader does not have 'showdead' turned on in their profile, or is logged out, then the text of [dead] comments is not displayed. Instead it will show as either [flagged] or [dead]. This is what happened with your comment when it was in the [flagged][dead] state. Had you viewed it with 'showdead' turned on in your profile, you would have seen that the comment was still readable and not deleted.
Once I unkilled it, it went back from [flagged][dead] to just [flagged], and it went back to being visible to everyone whether they are logged in or not, or have 'showdead' turned on or not.
If you're logged in and seeing some comments that just say [flagged] instead of text, this is because you haven't yet turned on 'showdead' in your profile.
In other words, you resurrected the deleted text. I just hope this conversation will not be deleted/flagged again and become unreadable.
I think it's also worth pointing out that this is done algorithmically and not randomly or arbitrarily by moderators based on their prejudices.