Edit: When the original thread was happening after Bob Lee was killed (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899), I considered pinning a comment to the top of the thread reminding commenters that none of us had any knowledge of what had happened and asking them not to have a flamewar between pre-existing narratives. I decided not to because I didn't want to overly interfere, but I regret that now.
I spent my entire day moderating those threads—to the detriment of the rest of HN actually. That happens sometimes when one story takes all the moderation oxygen. See the links below. (Edit: I'm going to move them to a child comment and collapse it so as not to overload this thread with 40 links. They're there if anyone wants them.) The reason I didn't post the comment I mentioned in the GP was not lack of moderation, but the opposite: I was moderating so much that I didn't want to be accused of over-intervening.
If anyone cares - in the end the decisions I made were (1) to factor out the comments that were actually about Bob Lee into their own thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457341), and (2) to let the other flamewar just burn since there wasn't anything we could to do stop it. The first decision was a good one—that thread spent many hours at the top of the front page. The second decision was probably good also—I have a pretty fine-tuned sense of what we can't control. But I do regret not posting that other reminder. I very much wanted to, and overruled myself—and now I wish I had left a better record of the mods upholding the value of not rushing to judgement. I was painfully aware of this at the time.
p.s. You might be wrong about Garry too. I happened to talk with him that morning and although he didn't try to influence how we handled the story on HN (people at YC don't do that), the direction of the conversation was opposite to what you're assuming. (In any case, if you're implying that Garry's politics influence HN moderation in any way, that's definitely wrong. We haven't changed anything since he came back to YC.)
Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555525 - April 2023 (1161 comments)
Edit: When the original thread was happening after Bob Lee was killed (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899), I considered pinning a comment to the top of the thread reminding commenters that none of us had any knowledge of what had happened and asking them not to have a flamewar between pre-existing narratives. I decided not to because I didn't want to overly interfere, but I regret that now.