Can someone please explain (as if I am an idiot) what is going on when a post starts losing comments?

Sorry if this seems silly but I was on news@lemmy.world and the comments started to go away (even some of my own) rapidly. I am still new to the lemmying and was wondering if I could find out whats going on?

I don't think it is necessarily censorship as the remaining posts are similar enough to the ones removed.