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Comment by insane_dreamer | Hacker News Reader

I’ve noticed that recent posts critical of Musk are getting flagged. This can’t be a coincidence.

This has been happening for quite some time. For example, a popular news item that is critical of Musk is published by many news organisations across the web. The item will then be submitted to HN by various users, sourced from various news organisation websites. Sometimes _each and every submission_ reporting the same story gets flagged. It would be helpful to see which users are flagging these submissions.

He uses bots (or some PR agencies) everywhere to promote his image, I see it personally on Facebook, on Reddit, but it is on all social media. This is how everyone think he is an engineer, a genius and turns even his failures (like hyperloop) as a successes.

I wouldn't be surprised that they would have few here too.

Nearly all stories about His Muskness get flagged, especially the sensational ones, for reasons that are not hard for anyone who has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html to understand. (Edit: if it helps at all, I would expect that positive cases get even more flagged than negative cases.)

The underlying issue isn't boo-$celebrity vs. yay-$celebrity, it's that HN doesn't function well under indignation or repetition, and that topic maximizes both.

Fair enough. And this one in particular fits in that category of pro/anti Elon.

But the DOGE ones also being flagged[0] don't fit that category and are highly relevant and impactful, IMO.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775684

With that one, it was hard to tell how much the story was just about a rename vs. how much was about substantive changes. I've belatedly turned off the flags though.

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