I don't speak for the mods, but it is most likely the community participants flagging them (whether that be pro Elon folks, or people who think it isn't relevant). Surf https://news.ycombinator.com/active instead, it avoids the community moderation activity.

Maybe think about it this way. If you read and reflect on the HN guidelines, it might occur to you that HN is trying to be everything that X is not. Thus, we don't need to be a site that is forever getting wound up about every installment in the X drama. That just detracts from what we're trying to be. Yet another bizarre thing happens at X today is not significant new information. We have better things to think about and talk about here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You can mail such questions to hn@ycombinator.com or search dang's comments for the years of explainers of the things that happen with posts of that nature.

Something is up. I don't pretend to know what. Certain topics end up flagged, almost as if by keyword, often within a minute of posting.