I don't think the Paypal story was "removed". That story is now on page 2. Yesterday, it stayed on the front page all day. It's decay from the 1st page to the 2nd page a day later seems comparable to other stories with ~200 comments.

The author's meaning of "remove from the frontpage" means abruptly disappearing from the front page and you still don't see it in the subsequent 6 or more pages.

Right. Stories that get buried fall from the front page to, like, the 50th. Not to the 2nd.

That's not quite true. "Buried" just means "gravity has been increased." Sometimes the gravity is adjusted massively, which moves stories to the 50th page. But it's very common for stories to go from page 1 to page 2. Even more common is to go from rank ~5 to rank ~29.

I flagged the Paypal story because it lacked supporting details that would allow me to evaluate the claims. For example, what was the person selling and how was it priced. Since one of the few leaked details was that the account involved USD to Canadian Dollar currency exchange, such information might have been relevant due to US currency control laws. In addition, people in the thread indicated that the dispute rate was high for e-commerce and the nature of the transactions might have clarified that.

In the end, the absence of detail meant there was no actionable information in the post, just 'Paypal sucks'. And I did not find that intellectually interesting.

In addition to what jasode said, Ask HNs/self-posts have an additional penalty. (which is something I disagree with)

IIRC we took the default penalty off that story and marked the submitter's account legit so he could exceed the usual rate limit.