alt Hacker Newsfor what it's worth I have no idea why it would be nonsense to question institutional motivations especially in the context of an academic article that could easily be corporate propaganda, I also think that shutting conversations down is much more harmful than discussing topics that are potentially harmful
Completely unevidenced conspiracy theories can only harm the discussion. The only possible benefit is to disconfirm conspiracy theories and discourage paranoid thinking. The odds that Standford as an institution are astroturfing on HN round down to 0.
What they're almost certainly observing is that these critical comments are being flagged as inappropriate. People make inappropriate comments that happen to contain criticism all the time, and I frequently see people edit them to declare that they were flagged because the group they're criticizing is astroturfing. It's virtually never the case. I've never seen it happen.
But to be clear I am completely ambivalent on Stanford and if you want to criticize them, more power to you.