[ryandrake]

Obviously, nobody but the HN admins/mods know about flagging or voting patterns, and they don't talk about the details when these kinds of events happen. The most you'll hear is "We looked at it and manually removed the flags." So, it is impossible to provide the evidence you are asking for.

You see this here with other topics, too, not just things some people dismiss as "political". Submit any article that criticizes a certain multi-company tech CEO and it will be instantly flagged off the main page.

[websiteapi]

so you don't know but you keep saying it's because of pro trumpers...? why spread misinformation. you could just say that it keeps getting flagged without lying.

[etyhhgfff]

We cant know for sure, because unlike dang we cannot correlate the flags. However, there is something called circumstantial evidence, which can even hold up in court.

You went from curious to accusation of misinformation and lying in just two comments. Thats concerning.

[belorn]

Since we are talking about circumstantial evidence, lets bring alternative theories to the table so that we know we are not excluding other explanations for the same data.

People who are afraid that they will get attacked if their views do not conform to the majority are more likely to flag an article and move on rather than engage with the discussion. Articles do not require 50% of the participants to flag it in order for it to get flagged, thus this minority will cause articles to get flagged. The more hostile the community get to dissenting opinions, the more articles get flagged, with the most heated topics getting the majority of flagging.

[Alive-in-2025]

When a certain type of political commenting keeps getting repeatedly flagged, in this case things about oligarchs or conservatives who might have made mistakes and did bad things, it's pretty clear that it's probably conservatives who are complaining about it.

[websiteapi]

or, more likely - people are flagging because they don't even want politics on here to begin with

[sillyfluke]

>or, more likely

Yes, argue against unsubstantiated bias with more unsubstantiated bias. Anyone who knows about the high percentage of educated immigrants in the tech sector and who knows the historical importance of immigrants to American innovation could easily find this highly relevant, especially the historical high ratio of successful immigrant founders in SV itself including a couple of white South Africans that come to mind -- at least one of which who seems to have had a less than by-the-book immigrant status and could have been deported in today's climate if someone wished it to be so.

The UK leaving the EU is one of the highest ranked stories on this site for similar reasons no doubt.

[websiteapi]

this is based on comments on the actual flagged articles - some people say why they flag you know.

[UncleMeat]

But plenty of other politics regularly reaches the front page without flagging and has done so for years and years and years.