> If the reasons are benign and not to suppress awareness and discussion -- in short, not people thinking themselves the lords of others -- then nobody would have a problem with people opting out with something like "ignore thread flags" option.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933217
what gives? easy way to put the money where the mouth is, no takers, ever.
> I'm sure he makes mistakes, has biases conscious and unconscious like the rest of us but I don't think he presiding over the place perched on a throne of lies.
It doesn't matter. Just like the identity or motivation of the people doing the flagging doesn't matter. This is what it actually is, and HN is one of the places to discuss issues like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979187 -- and that was all fine and well before SV got into bed with fascism, after all. Attracting people who are curious and passionate about technology (and its impact on the world) was a welcome thing, in between the YC job ads and whatnot. Such stories about a young Kremlin "maverick" would be read and discussed with much interest. But when people have even more expertise, are likely to know of more related things, then suddenly it's off-topic? Hah. I'd say the opposite is the obviously the case: this is where push comes to shove and a lot of lip service flies away like chaff in the wind.
> just people thinking 'oh god, not more of this shit, not here', whatever their other views.
And how do you square the deluge of all sorts of sophistry, the posters of which usually don't reply to corrections, doing mental gymnastics to claim there is nothing to see here, talking about "the far left" constantly and all that? They're just what we see, but the rest of the iceberg is "most likely" of some entirely different material?
Maybe, maybe not. People's reason from being unhelpful range from bad motivations to weakness, because saying "oh no not more of this" is just that. There is literally a "hide" button right next to "flag". That's what you do when you don't want to see something. I see a lot of stuff I don't care for and I would NEVER think of making it impossible for other people to discuss it.
And whenever one of those "most likely" people says that that they flagged it because they don't want to see it, not once did they respond to my question why others shouldn't be able to discuss it, either. One tried something extremely handwavey and then didn't respond when asked what that actually is supposed to mean. That's a clear signal to me, it's pretty undiluted even.