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They did have flagging. The [flagged] marker only appears when flags overwhelm upvotes, but flags affect rank well before that. More about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38918548.

All of the submissions on this topic are being flagged off the frontpage by users, not moderators.

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Sorry, I should have been more clear.

At the time I came across these threads, none of these submissions were "[flagged]" (or at least not indicated as such in the UI). They had 10-30ish upvotes, all were under an hour old, and yet they were buried on the first and second pages of "new".

Do articles that are flagged once or twice get internally penalized and de-ranked but not shown as "[flagged]" yet in the UI until they accumulate more flagging?

Articles start sinking as a result of flags long before they get the tag.

> Do articles that are flagged once or twice get internally penalized and de-ranked but not shown as "[flagged]" yet in the UI until they accumulate more flagging?

"Once or twice" isn't quite accurate but otherwise, yes, that's how it works.

That makes sense. Thanks for this and your other post.

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