I never claimed that people "investigate" the links and kill them. But I do believe that if enough people get tired of a certain subject, they will flag such links without bothering to even click them.
Then again, you did assume that this was done automatically. I think I can be allowed to assume that it's just other users flagging stuff they don't like.
If you see multiple [dead] stories that are minutes old by different users that have non-clickbait tech titles it is not unreasonable to think auto-moderation is a more likely explanation than someone manually killing every single post in near real-time by keeping a filter algorithm in their head and manually checking whether each expression in that algorithm is true or false.
>I don't find it hilarious.
If YC was asking for AI startup submissions but HN was auto-killing noobie AI submissions I would find that hilarious in a black comedy sense. Pity we don't share the same absurdist humor.