why flagged? What causes flaggage on a topic like this? I suppose the implicit reasons are many, but suspicion it's organised (or self organising) opposition to talking about "boring" things on HN.
The last person I had a cogent discussion about this stuff with was interesting. This is years ago, before the first Trump presidency. Very strongly aligned to organized religion (Catholic) having come out of a wierd pentecostal movement and lost contact with family. Very much "destroy the joint" and so backing Trump, yet hated Vance with a vengeance as "not really from west virginia and a scumbag" -I wonder what he makes of things now? So many contradictory pressures! Nice guy. I like talking to people even when I don't agree.
I tend to flag stories which bore me (which may be bad behaviour) or which look to be seeking to monetize from low effort deliverable. It would have to be an utterly repellant top level line of reasoning for me to want to flag it. Something arguing for CSAM or Race theory. I avoid the trans debates like the plague, and CoC discussions tend to be there these days but I wouldn't flag one just because its about a CoC issue.
There is signal within HN-flagged articles, for an enterprising LLM.
Even articles that are tech in nature like the access to Treasury payments or the stories about the people working for him.
I’ve seen the HN mod go out of his way to unflag actual conspiracy theories and yet here we are where real significant news can’t be discussed because of the people involved.
I do think that a cohort of people who probably always felt more aligned to the ethos behind Musk/Theil/Bezos and who resented being "shamed out" might be more willing to show their point of view now. The quickest path for them would be a mixture of tart comment contradicting my view, and flagging top levels (or comments) to get out of the problem quickly. It's ironic perhaps, that the best path for a libertarian is to chill speech, but its quick and effective.
(yes, thats probably insulting somebody)
Regular politics can be discussed elsewhere, that makes sense.
But stories involving technology in the government should have a place here, even when the people involved are the likes of Elon Musk.
And stories involving tech leaders acting in our government should have a place for discussion here too. But of course what’s happening is deeply destructive and unpopular, so some people who support that agenda want to keep it quiet.
Frankly people will hate us forever after this.