I’m new to HN. How does this relate to the theme of Hacker News?

Those of us that soldered wires, wrote custom drivers for esoteric hardware, and played with crazy things in the garage recognize that social systems are hackable too.

Anything that is interesting. It’s not all just tech here.

Despite the other comments attempting to expand the scope of "hacking" or general interest to pretty much anything, it doesn't.

Read this https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Submitter here. As per HN guidelines: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".

This playing out across generations of the family that kept her, the woman 'rescued' but staying with them for the time being, the social context, income levels, how to keep a slave from leaving in today's ultra-connected world, the low $ damages mentioned, relation with other modern forms of slavery...

Plenty to go on there. Btw welcome to HN!

You’re doing great so far; keep making more comments like this and you’ll fit right in

Welcome to Hacker News. Such submissions are mostly not on-topic according to the HN guidelines linked at the bottom of the page but there are persistent activist users who try to drag off-topic social issues onto Hacker News when the opportunity presents itself under the thin pretext that "everything is political". Most such submissions don't have the momentum to reach the HN front page but occasionally one does.

The joke's on them; it likely erodes support for their causes.

Welcome to HN! You’ll find that a lot of the readers and commenters here don’t view technology as an isolated field, that it interconnects with all sorts of other systems—sociology, politics, entertainment, manufacturing, business, and so on.

at the bottom of the page there is guidelines and FAQ

they also give good indication on how to handle topics that don't tickle your personal preferences (for "interesting" or "curious"): silently ignore them

especially if interest is the guidance on downvoting and flagging. the sorting is not according to your personal preferences, as in "social media", but according to the hn hive think. thus negative voting indicates "anti-curious", "anti-conversation", not dislike.