Now that I've seen it I suppose I need to figure out what we should do in this case. The general principle is that we moderate less, not more, when YC is part of a story (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...).
In this case, I suppose we can satisfy that rule by taking [flagged] off the post and leaving the sensational title instead of editing it the way we normally would.
I'm fairly relaxed about this sort of thing (e.g. some stories about Gaza and such should definitely on HN), but "firebrand says firebrand-y thing" ... yeah, that doesn't really fit. It's neither especially interesting or especially notable and we could have a story about this every week; perhaps even multiple.
What would be on-topic would be a an in-depth profile about this person, or something like that.
You might not be interested, that's totally fair, then don't upvote.
But flagging it so that people don't know the CEO of the community is expressing death threats? I feel like we should know. We shouldn't be learning about YC/HN from other sites and have it censored/flagged within the community.
Dan unflagged it for the look of things, and I would have done the same, but I resent the accusation that I'm "censoring" things. I told you why I flagged it: it's just a silly off-topic "tit-for-tat of the day" type of thing that could quickly overrun the site if left unflagged because there's countless stories like that every day. Entire sites are dedicated almost exclusively to reporting this sort of thing, and if you're interested in that then follow sites that report on that type of thing.
HN is about "intellectual curiosity". It's not a "tech site" or "YC community forum" or "SF daily news site" or anything else.