It's publicly known who the HN mods are AFAIK so if they were personally benefitting from changing the links the community would know about it. >> "Or to blogs

It's publicly known who the HN mods are AFAIK so if they were personally benefitting from changing the links the community would know about it. >> "Or to blogs where the opinion expressed shares their view or supports the interests of whoever?" This is what got me thinking about the dangers of attribution, particularly when linking to a political article. I think the reasons for changing titles and links (click-bait, blogspam instead of source) is sound but we as a community need to police it and generally that's done pretty well. When links or titles are changed there is usually a comment from someone who noticed and the comment usually lets people know of the original link/title.