Super strange when there are several on the front page, older, with less votes and less comments. To say it’s off topic is a little narrow minded given the current environment

You can watch these articles get user-flagged off the front page in real time by just refreshing. Lots of pro-administration brigading to censor this article (and similar ones).

There's a cohort here who impulsively downvote anything critical of the prez or a couple other such subjects. A small group is able to spoil the ranking determined by a much larger number of people upvoting.

Flags are weighted much more heavily than upvotes. So as long as there's a flag-happy minority cohort around, they have their way.

A16Z is deeply MAGA.

Many flag political/politically charged topics. The arguments which such topics often result in tend to overflow into other threads.