Anyone above a certain karma level can flag articles; it rarely if ever is HN staff. They don’t do the editorializing. Anything “controversial” will likely be

Anyone above a certain karma level can flag articles; it rarely if ever is HN staff. They don’t do the editorializing. Anything “controversial” will likely be flagged by a sufficient number of users; this doesn’t reflect a particular position, only how heated of a topic it is. Many don’t like political content, and it goes against HN guidelines to a certain degree; then again, it is not applied in any systematic fashion.