I'd really like to understand why posts like this often get flagged on HN. It's not because of flamewar in the comments section, is it? The upvotes/comments ratio looks normal to me. Can someone explain? In any case, thanks to the OP for the link.
One theory I've seen over and over again, as to why the current admin is cozying up with Russia, is that their bot farms and influencing campaigns are very good at what they do, and aligned enough to keep them up and running - purely out of self interest.
There must be some law on the internet that states something like : Anything I don't agree with or can't explain must be bots on the internet.
What I think that fails to realize is that so much of our technological world is defined by political decisions.
Failing to be aware of them and engaged in them (to a reasonable degree: it's a slippery slope) cedes those decisions to people who are technically ignorant.
In my country, there have been pacific protests about housing. They were faced with police brutality, but this only increased the people protesting and making demands. Some politicians initially said they wouldn't change policies, but seeing so many people involved, now some are changing their stance.
Politics have gotten really divisive, but ignoring them is not the answer.
Since everything has some political lens and the same repeated talking lines continue, and go way off topic. The discussion becomes meaningless.
So that's my reason. You can even say that these are extreme and must be destroyed, that makes the point more clear on why the flags happen. It's not bots, its people.
Ideally that'd expose lazy flagging as well as cut down on these inevitable "why was it flagged?" threads.
The flagging system makes it easy for any sort of coordinated brigading or organic dislike to hide posts that some people don’t want seen
YC is a fairly pro-oligarchy/pro-authoritarian organization and the in-group protects itself.
See: funding flock (and dozens of other authoritarian-adjacent surveillance/defense companies), YC CEO Garry Tan's recent political advocacy history, etc.
You don't say "We need more billionaires" unless you are pro-oligarchy/pro-authoritarian (or unless you are ignorant of history and fundamentally don't understand how inevitable it is that unaddressed extreme wealth inequality always leads to oligarchy and authoritarianism).
https://x.com/garrytan/status/1942992514954224025
Threads like this always get flagged as soon as they gain any sort of traction. Free speech for me, but not for thee.
And, in this case, it lasted all of 90 minutes and speaks of a typical autoban ML feature. This happens all the time. False positives are going to happen constantly with a company that literally has 4 billion people use.