Hacker News Reader

> no matter the source or rationale

In all fairness, it doesn't get much less credible than the Epoch Times.

> It's really the most divisive issue I've ever seen in my life.

I've been yelled at and called very awful things by people I know in real life. Biggest clue that this is 90% hysteria and 10% real.... What ever happened to keep calm and carry on.

Or there are financial incentives, which may justify paid interventions online to create the appearance of divisiveness. There are PR agencies which specialize in "grassroots PR".

Users can email hn@ycombinator.com to ask for human review of flagged articles. If the article still remains flagged, only then is the flag sanctioned by HN moderators. Otherwise, flags could be anywhere on the spectrum between organic users, troll botnets and paid interventions.

Is there an API to HN data which could report granular data on article flags, e.g. timestamps or user IDs doing the flagging?

If you've been playing pandemic longer than necessary, you'd clutch your pearls too.