Sounds like he contacted some of the sites in the article and they blew him off ("We are 100% secure, don't you see the Verisign badge?!"). But yeah, that still makes sense that it could be pulled for that reason.
It's not just that it makes sense, that's what GitLab said. I can't find the link right now, but it's on the earlier HN post about Github/lab taking it down.