Dang, I'm not OP, but in fairness, wouldn't it be more appropriate to just remove the controversial article/posts driving this altogether, rather than police one side of a discussion's comments which will inevitably come up in any rational discussion (on this subject matter).

I've seen a few of these moderation posts, and I don't mean to be critical but you end up contradicting yourself over time, in what seems like value-based judgments.

The HN rules aren't applied or written consistently with proper definition, and some guidelines contradict other rules. At its core, they are without proper unique definition, and so become moving goalposts that any reader or commenter will never be able to follow consistently while continuing to participate.

To follow the guidelines consistently would only be possible by never participating. It fails basic rules needed to have a consistent rational basis, which is needed to be able to actually do as you ask in the first place.

Its circular without unambiguous definition.

Its hard for me to see this as ideological, when you can objectively see this isn't valid when there is literature and evidence (though not specifically referenced) that shows psychology impacts decisions, albeit indirectly. Indoctrination is a real thing, a real problem even, and is most common to totalitarian states.

I can appreciate wanting to keep a community clean, and the large amount of work that necessarily goes into that, and having personally moderated other communities, I've found the rules need to be consistent and non-contradictory if you want them followed. Otherwise you just create an endless pile of extra work for yourself, where mistakes in moderation will happen, and you get a bad reputation when it happens often.

When the article misinforms or is biased and thus gets things wrong through omission, isn't it the communities job to provide such counterbalance discussion so false or incorrect and misleading information is discarded by the thoughtful individual. Without such counter-balance you get a positive feedback system, rather than a negative feedback system, which lends itself more readily towards chaos and delusion.

As an example, I seem to recall reading a comment where some people promoted ingesting known toxic chemicals, to falsely promote health, which you said did not merit moderation.

If these conversations are a problem, removing the linked article in its entirety, seems to be a better approach rather than squelching only part of the conversation (which in my opinion has validity).

Moderators really don't have the time to research claim correctness, and targeted actions outside egregious violations run the risk of promoting the censored topic.

There can be no basis for arguments of value-based bias, and the distorted reflected appraisal that comes with sentiment manipulation, if the article is removed wholesale in its entirety.

There is a body of literature showing birth rate is directly impacted by economics, which is not necessarily just monetary but includes the personal costs that may go into decisions, psychology and indoctrination affect this as well, and many of these subtle aspects are often unrecognized or may be misclassified as ideological when they do have basis in objective external measure, ie. in reality.

While I wish that many of these things were fanciful unbased opinion, there are a number of experts who have written in-depth case studies on indoctrination, torture, cults, and brainwashing from first-hand accounts that credibly back indoctrination arguments and are what prompted the WHO to change their definition of torture to include psychological harm through maladaptive behavior induction.

Robert Lifton, and Joost Meerloo wrote many books on the subject matter.

If you cut off communication that would normally seek to raise the community to a higher understanding, all conversation degrades and falls instead to the stagnant lowest common denominator creating more work in moderation.

That's what I've seen over the years.