Why on earth is that flagged?
And instead of the article just not being shown to them, their whim is forced on everybody.
And even if it is an incendiary news article, the discussions are usually still better than average. But no, a few whinys kill it for everyone.
But nope, my original comment is flagged. Le sigh.
Sometimes a lot of comments on a post are a sign that the post was extremely interesting and has generated equally interesting discussion, and sometimes it's entirely the opposite signal; said post was a "trigger" topic generating a pointless flame-war that nobody in their right mind wants to read or participate in. The numbers alone aren't the whole picture, but only a small detail that signals something is happening there. This is one of those situations where LLMs/"AI" (love/hate it) could actually be a huge help, classifying particularly "active" posts into useful "buckets" by type.
Except for all of the people commenting and up voting! There's zero downside to turning off flags there. If you don't want to read it or participate, you don't have to.
The culture of having active discussions killed is way more frustrating and discouraging.
Post: I think Hitler was good [+51 unflaggable]
Comments: no he wasn't x100000
One concern I do have with the whole thing about killing active discussions when they're just trolling and flame-wars is that those people will then seek out other threads to invade because the one they were busy with is no longer available to them. Perhaps some form of magic "shadow ban" so that they can still see and interact with the thread if they so desire? Keep 'em busy so that they do less damage elsewhere?
The answer is to just let people talk about what they want to talk about. One person's "flame-war" is another person's meaningful conversation. No one is forced to read or participate in threads, and those people shouldn't have the ability to kill a conversation for those who do.
correction: some guy got his wallet hurt.
It is clear to me that monied/political interests are on every platform, including this one.