I'm pushing back against the conclusion based on effectively unverifiable or questionable assumptions, mostly. I think it mostly leads to just so stories about

I'm pushing back against the conclusion based on effectively unverifiable or questionable assumptions, mostly. I think it mostly leads to just so stories about why something is or isn't ranked at whatever and most of them don't stand up to fairy gentle stickpoking. If this was not of interest to the HN community it wouldn’t be voted to the front page. This is one is at least easy and inaccurate - it takes very little to end up on the front page, at least briefly. You can't draw sensible conclusions about the hivemind from half a dozen votes. HN has a bias which favors some sources, including the EFF, so that in it self makes it more likely to be voted to the front page. That's an extra thing on top of the already inaccurate thing and I don't think it's particularly accurate itself. Plenty of other EFF stuff has been regularly criticized, downranked, occasionally even flagged. From that point of view, it's impossible to know whether the rest of your theory of the trajectory of this story makes any sense since the premises themselves are faulty.