I would hazard a guess that it's more to do with the reaction of the commentators on r/politics to the articles these sites put out than anything else. Here on

I would hazard a guess that it's more to do with the reaction of the commentators on r/politics to the articles these sites put out than anything else. Here on HN there are certain topics which tend to descend into pointless roundabout arguments and typically these tend to disappear off the front page fairly quickly. I'm guessing the mods got fed up with policing the same tedious/endless/toxic conversation and decided to kill off the major causes of them.