[rectang]

I understand the moderation decisions made today, but I'm alienated by them.

A political article like this one would ordinarily get flagged off the HN front page. The subject matter of Twitter and Facebook imposing constraints on distribution is germane, but this article goes way beyond that by propagating the suspect email content.

[dang]

Obviously HN readers are going to want to see the emails and decide for themselves. There's zero implication of authenticity (or inauthenticity for that matter). The only thing we care about at our end is having an accurate article (and headline) for the story.

Politics isn't completely off-topic for HN—there's overlap and it depends. There's lots of previous explanation about that at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so..., and if anyone has a question that isn't answered there, I'd like to know what it is.

We turn off user flags sometimes when a story contains interesting (in HN's sense) new information and the probability of a substantive discussion clears a certain threshold.

[heartbreak]

> see the emails and decide for themselves

Using information or skills uniquely possessed by HN readers?

[dang]

Surely not.