I’m pretty sure I posted those three stories in something more like a minute than an hour.

I could neither believe that torture could be a controversial subject, nor that any controversy could be enough of a reason to bury this subject. There have, after all, been dozens of stories on the front page about this Googler and his misogynistic screed, and the inevitable controversy was deemed acceptable in light of this poor fellow’s freedom of speech.

I figured dozens of people been tortured by the government might lead to a similar balancing of interests. But I guess I was wrong.

Maybe it's time one of these threads wasn't flagged/shadow-flagged.

If HN's readership decides something is flag-worthy, then they've decided it. That's really all there is to it.

It’s not. Flaggings are routinely overridden by mods, in both directions.

Not routinely; occasionally, when an article clearly fits the site guidelines and the site mandate as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That's not clear with this story. Indeed one can make a somewhat stronger argument that it doesn't: would they cover it on TV news? (yes) — is it evidence of a new phenomenon? (no, unfortunately) — is it likely to turn into a flamewar? (highly). We'd need stronger answers to those questions in order to turn off the flags.

What does seem clear is that most of the community doesn't consider this a good story for HN. If they did, the upvotes would have outweighed the flags, and the opposite was the case. I know a smaller set of users feels passionately the other way, but that's not enough for us to override community opinion. In fact, that would be a strategy for turning HN into a mostly-political site.