Looks like it. When I first loaded HN 2 minutes after this outage started, the story was #2. Then I refreshed after 3 minutes and it wasn't on the front page at all. Used the search tool to find it and then upvoted.
If you see something like this and you think it's in error, you can let them know and they'll likely be able to respond more quickly. There's a contact link in the footer.
No, I'm not. In my experience the mods are quite responsive, and have explained site behavior on more than a few occasions. They've also adjusted flags and weights of submissions if they identify an issue.
