1. Politics has been getting more freedom here lately, especially if it's the first story about something new. This is, as far as I can see, the first story about this.
2. The story has an interesting technical component, about encryption, privacy, and tracking - things that a lot of HN users care about.
3. It mostly hasn't deteriorated into a flamefest.
Politics hasn't been getting more freedom here lately, though, that was my sarcastic point. Every day there's a bunch of stuff flagged off of the front page for being only tangentially related to contemporary American politics yet this gets the thumbs up. It's indicative of people trying to quell certain types of political conversation only.
Number two on your list shouldn't apply because we've seen many technical articles about Tesla, DOGE, etc flagged in the past months
3 shouldn't apply either because we lose posts every day just because they have the "potential" for flaming.
1. Politics has been getting more freedom here lately, especially if it's the first story about something new. This is, as far as I can see, the first story about this.
2. The story has an interesting technical component, about encryption, privacy, and tracking - things that a lot of HN users care about.
3. It mostly hasn't deteriorated into a flamefest.