Three hours ago, noman-land posted about “***” appearing in lieu
of a reply's actual text. He was flagged and his post deleted.
You can still for the time being catch his post here
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34694341

I noticed same starting about 6-8 weeks ago. I view posts via
the firebase API, so I'm more likely to catch things in an intermediary
state. When I view the “***” reply in the browser, the reply body is by
then perfectly normal.