I think we thought that bit was linkbait. We routinely take out baity "you" phrases from titles. The story itself stayed on the front page, as you pointed out at the time. There have been many negative Airbnb stories on the front page of HN—indeed there was one today.
FWIW, "don't censor stories for being negative about a YC startup" is literally the #1 rule of HN moderation: it's the first thing PG said to me when showing me how to moderate HN. I don't even think I had time to sit down before he said it.
That doesn't mean we don't moderate such stories; we may, if they break the HN guidelines (such as by being linkbaity). It means that we consciously moderate them less than we normally would, and we're pretty meticulous about it.