We just found out about this story and the submissions of it. It looks like it didn't make the front page because it set off HN's voting ring detector.
Mods didn't touch either thread except (1) we merged the duplicate discussions and (2) we rolled back the voting ring penalty so that the story would be on the frontpage.
This is in keeping with the principle that we moderate stories less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is part of the story. That's been the case since the beginning, and I've posted about it dozens of times: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
Respectfully, I think there may be an issue with your voting ring detection, which is that if multiple people try to submit the same article and are redirected to an existing post and they upvote it, that might be setting off the voting ring alert. Can you check that?
I would imagine that's what happened here.