Omg, you're right, they did it to me as well.
I had this issue years ago, and even got into a Twitter argument with their founder. It was a bug. Not sure what is the cause now.
HackerNoon only supports canonical links to personal sites with SSL certificates and for companies in our brand as author program. This is nothing new. The poster here wants canonical links to their startup's blog without being a part of our brand program. He can do so by claiming his free credit/s, and just making the bio the owner of the content (his startup company and not him). https://sponsor.hackernoon.com/brand-as-author Publishing posts owned by technology companies (and not individuals) is a freemium publishing program on HackerNoon.
Here's more about how publishing and republishing on HackerNoon work:
https://help.hackernoon.com/republishing-guide
https://help.hackernoon.com/backlinks-guideline
https://help.hackernoon.com/editorial-guideline
https://help.hackernoon.com/for-writers
https://help.hackernoon.com/distribution
https://help.hackernoon.com/writer-account--perks
https://hackernoon.com/the-second-human-rule-9a1a3yhl
https://hackernoon.com/4-facts-you-should-know-about-republi...
https://www.publish.hackernoon.com/
https://hackernoon.com/how-to-retitle-republished-posts-gbn3...
https://hackernoon.com/hacking-hacker-noon-best-republishing...
Honestly, if you're using HackerNoon just to get canonical links, you don't understand the value of publishing on HackerNoon or other technology publication for that matter. It's about getting a free human editor and reaching people where they are.
Few years ago they had bug that was doing the same thing.
https://community.hackernoon.com/t/canoncial-link-missing-re...