I agree that it’s a function of moderation, but I also think moderation is deliberately done in a way to drive/keep engagement; otherwise, there would be far fewer ideological, current-events, and non-“hacker” posts that receive a lot of comments and upvotes.

For example my post got appropriately flagged while a lot of other popular post don't get flagged even though they don't meet the guidelines: https://www.hntoplinks.com/year?sort=upvotes https://www.hntoplinks.com/year?sort=comments