I just gave up railing against it and run it through threader.app or threadreaderapp.com.

Posts can be flagged, though there's a karma threshold required to do so.

A sufficient number of flags will kill a post (it's noted as "flagged").

This is addressed in multiple FAQ items, linked at the bottom of every HN page: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

There is no downvoting for submissions, although I wish there were.

Considering how difficult is to follow lengthy posts that are split up in reverse chronological order, and how unintuitive it is to find replies, I surely disagree. The medium is very poor for centralized discussion of a single topic, in contrast to something like a single Reddit or HN article.

I mean, sure, but that's one tweet. 40 tweets in a row that you're supposed to read in order, comprise one large whole, nothing "micro" about it. I actually respect when someone follows the rules as it were, and spends the effort to post one tweet that conveys a lot concisely with a little. That to me is deserving of the label microblogging. Although unfortunately right alongside that is all the idiotic shallowness, sloganeering and fascistic tendencies posted by people who are like "thank god, a place where the format is as tiny as my thoughts." That's fitting a little into a little, so if there's a counter-argument to be made legitimacy-wise, that's it right there. But spreading something longer over a bunch of tweets, that's just regular blogging, on the wrong platform. I'm not fooled. It's a nuisance. Like when someone decides to pay you $5 as 500 pennies.