HN removes a "how" if the post starts with it, sometimes making it hilarious.

Otherwise you might confuse it with the HN mod tomhow.

Same reason they remove "dang" if the post starts with it, like the discussion about "Dang! Who ate the middle out of the daddy longlegs".

https://ifunny.co/picture/dang-who-ate-the-middle-out-of-the...

Tbh the missing how is probably why I followed the link. And I appreciated the post, so net positive outcome here.

I’ve seen this a few times now, what’s the context/background on why this is done?

I think maybe they check for "How to [...]" and other variations? "How I broke TLS 1.3" -> "I broke TLS 1.3"

yeah but why?

Over-engineering to solve a problem that doesn't exist, thereby making one.

sure…what’s the motivation? is this seriously that difficult of a question to answer? this “solution” was put in place for a reason, what’s the reason? does nobody actually know?

Someone was annoyed by certain cliche titles I guess. They also remove numbers.

So if you post "1850 Bloody Island Massacre" it removes the number. But it is meant to remove eg. "13 reasons why you should impeac[...]" B/c apparently the number of reasons why is too much of a cliche or bother? Idk.

Email dang haha

yeah, really wish they would fix that one!