There are probably two factors at play here: (1) somewhat counterintuitively, HN penalizes stories that have a large number of comments compared to votes. It'

There are probably two factors at play here: (1) somewhat counterintuitively, HN penalizes stories that have a large number of comments compared to votes. It's typical for a post with ~300 upvotes to have under 100 comments; you can see several examples on the front page right now. This thread has nearly 200 comments. Having significantly more than the expected number of comments, and especially deep comment threads, is often an indicator of a flamewar, so the algorithm penalizes stories that meet that pattern. (2) flags. Not "omg I support torture" flags, but "this isn't hacker news, it's mainstream media" flags. This story is very much on the bubble for me -- it's obviously something being covered in mainstream news, but this is a link to the actual report and people are discussing the findings in detail. (I have not flagged it, but I understand why others would.) [EDIT: this comment was posted in response to a since-removed question about this story's position on the front page. I have left it because I believe the information is helpful.]