[ryandrake]

"Political" is not a binary true or false. There are plenty of on-topic articles here that merely have "political overlap" as dang[1] puts it, and they should not be flagged. To be fair, this article seems to be more towards the "purely political" side of the spectrum and was probably correctly flagged.

I think this rule is generally followed by HN's users, but for whatever reason, anything that touches "Elon" or "DOGE" always gets insta-buried, whether or not it's tech-related, whether or not it's interesting, whether or not it's worth discussing.

I don't think it's automated bots, but there is most certainly an online Elon Defense Brigade of real users out there trying to bury anything negative about the guy. I don't know what would make someone devote so much time to defending the honor of a billionaire. It's almost religious.

1: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...