[pvg]

How can you tell the 'degree of flag' other than show their time on FP, though? I'm saying there's no real way to evaluate your claim with the links you've given because they just show you, dunno, that it was a story on HN. And again, 'high interest' is just an assumption of yours. A story can be high interest and lots of people can think it's just a poor HN fit.

[fzeroracer]

That's why I qualified my claim with 'believe'. There's no way for either of us to validate our claims because flags are not public, so all we have are inferences and figuring out what stories survive and why.

But this goes back to my main point is that what people think is a good fit on HN boils down to ideological reasons. That's why stories about Youtube banning someone gets a large number of votes upwards with complaints of censorship while stories like this one get flagged.

[pvg]

Sure but you started by saying these things weren't flagged and they probably were. Lots of things are flagged, it doesn't take a lot of flags to throw something off the front page. I'm sure people flag for 'ideological' reasons but I think the chances are pretty good it largely evens out.

PG's most recent essay got banished off the FP (correctly, if you ask me) within a couple of hours, with zillions of upvotes and a thread made of pure HN hell. You can actually interpret that outcome N different ways to support a preferred narrative. One might be that HN is just a place for oblivious techbros. Another one might be that HN's immune system worked and deep-sixed the thing.