Posts about divisive ideological topics are often (in fact usually) low-quality and lame, so it's natural for them to be downvoted or flagged. That's to be expected on a site that is trying to hover at least a little above internet default, with its flames and its rages and its repetitions.
People don't post about these things out of intellectual curiosity—they mostly just reiterate pre-existing positions and points and agendas. Such comments typically make up for the lack of curiosity or information with rhetoric and indignation. That's what we're trying to avoid on HN.
I know my position on the topic is a little controversial, but I wasn't deliberately trolling, I do genuinely believe what is wrong with today's internet is a lack of accountability.
TV, newspapers, books, magazines were all held accountable for spreading disinformation and harmful speech. I think we need the same protections on the public facing internet.
5 days ago, HN admins have removed a post about the desastrous effects of liberal policies (shock doctrine) on Kirghistan economy and societal fabric adopted after the collapse of Soviet Block.
I only had access to it because my rss reader had already saved the link to the blog post in its internal database. But there wasn't any reference of it anymore on HN when I wanted to reach the comment page.
Beside that, the rumors of journalists being fired from english media sphere for their coverage of the recent Nord-stream sabotage and the self-censoring (kind of olympic level mental gymnastic) of some other reporters about the event is mind-bogging.
Political articles that are very likely to devolve into mudsling fests are regularly nuked from hn, as I'm sure you and everyone who uses the rss feed knows. I'm frankly fine with that. It's not the focus of this site. Occasionally those articles are pretty interesting, and then I'm happy I see them from the rss, but usually I can see why they were removed.
People don't post about these things out of intellectual curiosity—they mostly just reiterate pre-existing positions and points and agendas. Such comments typically make up for the lack of curiosity or information with rhetoric and indignation. That's what we're trying to avoid on HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html