Comment by incomingpain
7 months ago
So what if it were public? It's still essentially private because all the usernames are anonymous.
Makes sense to me why that story got flagged.
>- people are sick of 'political' stories and flag them out of tedium
Looking at active page, pretty minimal politics. So they are being flagged, the reasoning is unknown.
>- there is a prevailing pro-Trump, anti-science majority of active users on the site
lol the polar opposite is quite true. Virtually no support for trump on HN. Most of us arent in the USA, and those ive seen who are, are clearly democrats. Us Canadians hate trump pretty much, even the Maple MAGA crowd has disappeared.
>- there are active influence campaigns using sock-puppet accounts to hide and prevent discussion of ongoing attacks on science
<tinfoil> tags missing?
While the site is pseudonymous and that's a good thing, making flagging data public would still allow analysis on why exactly flagging seems to be so aggressive. E.g. are these all accounts who flag the same stories? Are they accounts in 'good-standing'? Etc.
We have dang's word that he hasn't detected any funky behavior with respect to flagging and that these are organic events. But I don't see a reason that the information shouldn't be available. I struggle to think of a downside.
Not really relevant to your main point but the idea there aren't social media influence campaigns from all sides is more of a tinfoil position than acknowledging that there absolutely are, whether or not they are effective.
I'm pretty sure that active anti-vaxx voting rings existed 2020-21. There's always a fair amount of anti-mRNA sentiments expressed under links that don't get flagged to death.