How and why are some answers now hidden without five more thumbs down than thumbs up?

On some platforms, for some users, there is new filter for answers besides "Oldest" "Newest" "Rated Highest", it's "Relevancy".

Yahoo has yet to explain how exactly it works, but it appears that software is automatically hiding answers that it has determined are least relevant to the question. (Probably a bad idea to rely on software this way, considering how glitchy the site is already.)

(edit) oops it's "Relevance" not "Relevancy"

It appears to be Yahoo's attempt at discerning the relevancy of an answer. Unfortunately from what I have seen it doesn't work right.The thumbs down or up doesn't matter. You will see Rated Highest, oldest and Newest as filters for answers. On those select questions where you see hidden answers Relevancy in now added to that dropdown menu.

I find this feature very confusing. I thought the asker was performing this function. Guess not.

Thumbs do not hide content. You are seeing "Sort by relevance", which you can change.

Just a feature yahoo has added.