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Comment by someuser54541 | Hacker News Reader

I'm fairly confident posts like these are artificially weighted to fall off the front page..that seems to happen when a COVID related post gets popular on HN. This post has more points and comments than the majority of stuff on the front page but it's currently on page 3.

I've casually noticed something similar over the past ~18 months with posts related to COVID.

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Many people flag these types of posts (including myself) because they get too toxic. I even flagged this one despite commenting on it.

Is “because I think they become too toxic” a good reason to flag a post? I flag spam, shitposts, unsubstantiated or patently false articles. You, like other people, are abusing your flagging powers.

^^^ This summarizes the problem perfectly.

Toxic to whom? The scientists which are trying to bury this because it's putting their careers in danger?

>> flag these types of posts (including myself) because they get too toxic

Please do not do this.

When you do this, it potentially prevents others from being able to to analyze it and form their own judgement.

"Too toxic" is an opinion.

Yeah, an opinion I share, and if enough people share that opinion, HN is designed to react.

I'm not going to stop flagging this kind of content, and dang is here to overrule me/others when he feels the need to, which is also how HN is designed.

The post is up, the system is working as intended. We all have roles to play here, no need to worry!

I find it interesting that this story was picked up by the WSJ and has not yet hit the NYTimes. The WSJ editorial staff is well known to have a conservative bias, but their newsroom editors are considered to be quite centrist.

That NYT doesn’t think this story is newsworthy is itself newsworthy.

It’s a WSJ exclusive, negotiated by the journal. You can read that fact in red above the headline. What it gave the deep state in return for the exclusive is unknown

It was flagged by users. We sometimes reverse that and I've done so in this case.

Why? What's the thinking in that decision? This kind of post draws out the lowest quality comments and attracts accounts that comment only on this kind of post.

It seems like significant new information on a major ongoing topic.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Thank you for the clarification.

AIUI, comments count against a post's ranking on HN, in an attempt to cool the discussion of controversial topics.

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