I wish HN would add something in the page that indicates that flags were turned off for a post.

Yes, the moderators are in effect editors of a news media site with heavy social elements. Editorial decisions about articles should be handled differently from content moderation of user comments. There is a lot of editorial involvement (tweaking titles, hand placing articles on the front page, flag removal) but almost no transparency or communication. Sometimes a pinned comment from dang but that's it.

These actions aren't nefarious or anything but like, is there a policy? Or is it just if a mod happens to see something and they happen to feel like tweaking it, they do. There are actual (varying, but something) standards professionals follow on this stuff, or at least convincingly pretended they did until pretty recently. HN's editors don't take the site as seriously at it deserves or needs for its stature, influence, and subject matter.