It's certainly not #3: with 3 hours and 70 votes it would easily be ahead of #4 in the screenshot (4 hours and 66 votes). Instead it's #27. #2 I don't see why

It's certainly not #3: with 3 hours and 70 votes it would easily be ahead of #4 in the screenshot (4 hours and 66 votes). Instead it's #27. #2 I don't see why you would flag the topic and not the political comments. Moreover we see plenty of topics where comments go political that don't get egregiously flagged down. #1, I'll plead ignorance on any automated flame detection but I'm very skeptical that's what we're seeing. I'll stick with Occam's razor: time and again the articles this happens to are either critical of google, or favorable to MS or Apple. Examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5716010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5716010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5715231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5715231