You can watch these articles get user-flagged off the front page in real time by just refreshing. Lots of pro-administration brigading to censor this article (and similar ones).

Super strange when there are several on the front page, older, with less votes and less comments. To say it’s off topic is a little narrow minded given the current environment

A16Z is deeply MAGA.

Many flag political/politically charged topics. The arguments which such topics often result in tend to overflow into other threads.

There's a cohort here who impulsively downvote anything critical of the prez or a couple other such subjects. A small group is able to spoil the ranking determined by a much larger number of people upvoting.

Flags are weighted much more heavily than upvotes. So as long as there's a flag-happy minority cohort around, they have their way.