[dang]

Not sure what you mean by this but the post was upvoted and flagged by users. It's perfectly normal for a sensationalistic post to get lots of upvotes (indignation routinely attracts them), and then lots of flags. Moderators never touched it btw.

Since the users mostly aren't in contact with each other, I don't think anyone was "pushing a message". It's extremely easy to imagine that such things are happening when they aren't, especially if you cherry-pick specific examples out of the randomness. Most of what happens is just stochastic.

[dakna]

I don't think "sensationalistic post" is an appropriate label for a guest editorial by Heiko Maas, Germany's Foreign Minister, published in one of the largest news magazines in Europe with a distinctive reputation for revealing political misconduct and scandals.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Spiegel

I was surprised it was flagged and it goes to show how hard it is for a US-centric audience to evaluate foreign news sources.

[dang]

Sorry, I can see how that wasn't clear. I wasn't talking about the content of the article. I'm sure the German Foreign Minister is a model of sobriety.

The issue is that the root topic is so sensational–probably the most sensational of all topics right now—and that quality transfers directly to all related submissions and, especially, threads.

[dakna]

> The issue is that the root topic is so sensational–probably the most sensational of all topics right now

Agreed. It is incredibly hard to have a discourse about this.

Thanks for the clarification, and also for all your excellent moderation on this platform.