zlacker

>>jseip+(OP)
I find it really disheartening to learn that any article with "NSA" in the title is pretty severely penalized by HN's algos. This seems like one of the seminal issues of the decade, for this community in particular.

>>sethba+Xk
I think we have to take the referenced article with a grain of salt. If I read it correctly, there is nary a mention of the flagging function. So, to put it bluntly:

Correlation does not equal causation

NSA articles may be more often penalized...but they are likely more often to be flagged. It's not that people here are defending the NSA or anything, it's that people have often said that they are tired of reading NSA all the time. And so, their reaction may be to flag those stories, giving them a penalty.

The referenced article does not really account for that, AFAIK