why are posts about Elon Musk and DOGE getting quickly flagged?

Endless links here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42977160

If you're seeking an answer in good faith, scroll back through:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang

There are Elon Musk + DOGE threads up and active and still taking new comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments

it's the relentless repetition that's mostly causing flagging.

Posted threads still appear on https://news.ycombinator.com/newest, even if [flagged] acttive threads appear on the RSS feed, and commenting is still visible on /newcomments.

"Buried" here really means that political threads aren't appearing on the front page of a primarily technical and industry news site.

There's still a lot of community discussion tacking place.

I think a portion of the flagging is boredom, but it seems to happen very quickly.

I wonder if it is bots, or perhaps some people are so invested (perhaps literally) in the Musk companies that they have a strong incentive to stop criticism?

Do you want to understand or do you want to express an opinion?

Is your question something that can be answered and lead to greater understanding or is it not designed to be answered?

There is a type of thinking that deadens the mind and stops understanding. Some ideas are mind killers stopping any further thought. Many people in us vs them situations do not want to understand the other and in group psychology, understanding the other leads to a weaker group. Groups (e.g. politics) therefore are inherently against empathy with those outside the in-group.

One way I noticed I'm in a bubble is when I come up with my own explanations for others behaviour without wanting to actually interact and understand with them. Then I can begin to break down those borders and see myself in the other.

We are asked to be more thoughtful and kind on HN. How can we do this consciously? How can questions and discussions be created that encourage understanding between people?

Other than spew words at each other on a little niche web site (HN), nobody here can actually "do anything" about Musk, DOGE, or the tech elite.

If you want to talk about those things, there are lots of other web sites - bigger and more important ones - where they are being discussed. Go for it.

From the flagging, I'd assume that plenty of people here want a refuge from all that useless talk and arguments and unhappiness.

I haven't seen any posts myself but maybe they are considered off topic as per the HN guidelines.

My HN RSS feed (newest posts with at least 10 points; I think I'm gonna have to raise that number) is basically useless because it's mostly Elon Musk and other US politics drama. People repeatedly complaining about spammy off-topic posts being flagged and making up conspiracy theories about it is the sugar on top. I am so tired of this.

Take a hint, people.

Some of it is because of redundancy (ie, multiple posts on the same topic), but a lot of it is an immediate reaction to anything negative about Elon Musk. This means that posts that can't overcome that reaction with vouches or a mod stepping in end up dying quickly. There's a few people that will argue that 'there's nothing to really do or discuss about it, ergo it should be flagged' but plenty of other topics along those same lines reach the front page. Usually stuff along the line of other culture war topics.

For example of stuff flagged on reaction, this post [1] (AI Startup School with Elon Musk, by ycombinator) was flagged for a long period of time and only recently got out of being flag-killed. A better example is this post by Krebs [2] which went deep into the history of one of the highlighted members of DOGE, their connection to cybercrime and more despite being well researched.

I think the way to describe it is that tech is going through the same political fracturing and reckoning as the rest of society. As hard as tech has tried to put on the facade of being apolitical, when you've got ycombinator inviting Elon Musk for talks or pg talking about the dangers of woke it was inevitable for HN to become more and more political over time.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42973989

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979187

Low quality discussions and partisan reportage. We could use a few sources which elaborate on why cutting spending is legitimate, how funds have been abused and the statutory authority of the executive over government bureaus. We don't have to agree, but we've been browbeaten with the other side's arguments all week.

9 out of 10 times it's ragebait, the whole point is to get media attention. Don't waste your time on that. The discussions that follow are low quality.

If it's the kind of topic that creates hateful rhetoric, we're going to flag it, and fast. This is exactly where every single Trump/Musk/Doge/whatever thread goes, and it's not what HN is here for. If you want to scream your political opinions into the void, do it elsewhere. We are here to wonder and create, not to waste our lives talking about politics. I, for one, am glad that there are enough of us here that believe HN is truly a bastion of intelligent discourse and are protecting that.

As an aside, you should seriously consider why you think anything you don't like is a conspiracy against you. That kind of thinking is indicative of mental illness, and it's simply everywhere these days. Do some critical thinking.