I’m glad the flagging system exists on HN but I think it could do with improvements. I think it would be interesting to be able to see how many flags an item has gotten and who has flagged it.

There’s a clear pattern to items that get flagged (those that are critical of right wing causes in particular, Musk, DOGE, ICE etc) despite those topics generating a lot of discussion. It would be interesting to have clearer visibility into whether this kind of thing is spontaneous or whether there is a core group of power users censoring topics they dislike.

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GaryBluto 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> There’s a clear pattern to items that get flagged (those that are critical of right wing causes in particular, Musk, DOGE, ICE etc)

Have you considered that it could be that left wingers are more likely to submit political posts on a technology forum rather than right wingers only flagging left wing posts?

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mooxie 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Agreed. While I really value HN's commitment to not becoming Reddit, the intersection of politics and tech (and their effects on our lives) is indisputable. If we can't talk about the government's use of technology as a tool of the state without it being considered a 'hot button' topic - especially considering the relevance that politics have always had to 'hackers' - then this is really just a site for discussions about technology fluff.

	▲	giraffe_lady 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The biggest example of this is on military stuff. You can literally post northrup grumman placed articles from military trade journals fawning over some new weapon system and that's fine, that's technology. But any comment about the applications of that technology, who it will be used on, by whom, for whose benefit, with what consequences, all of that is off limits. That's political. I fully understand that this is a legitimate preference of a lot of people. But it is revolting.