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Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't get flagged. To be fair to HN, they do want just tech news. Most COIVD and riot posts are weighted down. It looks like it takes them 3~4 times as many votes to rise as other articles. I can understand them wanting to keep HN focused on tech. It's a good distraction during this.

But when we do occasionally see these posts before they get flushed to page 4 or 5, I love the fact that the comments are filled with a lot of rational back and fourth and good arguments.

Reddit is the ultimate cesspool of extreme-left right now in almost every city/state/country sub. It's absolutely insane and people who do not agree with official narratives are constantly downvoted to oblivion.

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Thanks for the context.

My writing focus has been on big tech, censorship, deplatforming and related topics and the last 4 or 5 articles I've posted here were flagged despite being heavily upvoted and making the front page.

I can see people flagging it if it nobody comments, nobody upvotes it and it's clear nobody is interested or finds it germane. Ok.

But it always seemed as if people were using the flag function as a "downvote". They don't like the message or the ramifications of the article so they flag it.

It really is ridiculous.

You can disagree with something without deeming it inappropriate and deciding on behalf of everybody else that they shouldn't even get the chance to form their own opinion on it.

The way I see it, if an article didn't address a topic relevant to HN, then it wouldn't rise. It's that simple.

>The way I see it, if an article didn't address a topic relevant to HN, then it wouldn't rise. It's that simple.

This is, at best, naive. On a site this large, posting come current affairs clickbait is sure to attract a lot of voting from people who think HN is Reddit. Or should be.

I think it's a hard call. I've seen a lot of articles recently that are interesting and germane, yet clearly written from the perspective of fighting some political battle. I think it's appropriate to flag such posts even if a lot of people upvote them.

There is a really good podcast out yesterday with Bill Fleckenstein on QuothTheRaven, and he talked about exactly this:

The idea disagreeing with official discourse is somehow "political". It shouldn't be. But everything is so polarized lately that disagreeing with the methodologies for collating case fatalities, for example, or worrying about the second-order effects of the lockdowns, suddenly that makes you "Pro-Trump", or if you agree with all of the above then you're a progressive. It's insane.

I blame the mainstream media for most of that dynamic. Can't we have a simple pandemic without the entire thing becoming a political football?

Completely agreed. When I call something political, I mean that people are making it into a fight against their political opponents.

> Reddit is the ultimate cesspool of extreme-left right now in almost every city/state/country sub. It's absolutely insane and people who do not agree with official narratives are constantly downvoted to oblivion.

I thought I was the only person thinking this. It really is scary how much mono-thinking is going on in the world

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