* Commercial influence on computing has proven to be so problematic one wonders if the entire stack is a net negative, it shouldn’t even be a question.
I have seen people on HN publicly state that they flag anything they don't agree with, regardless of merit.
I guess they use it like some kind of super-down button.
check my recent submission, the vitriol it received, and read this
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/27/youll-never-gue...
Many people will argue that they do good at Meta, and that they strive to do good. Their results probably are good too - meta is vast so statistically you will find good work and good outcomes.
Those people are already painted as evil, so why would they engage with the question ? Even if you are genuine and earnest?
And I agree with jakeydus: I'm not seeing anything I could call "vitriol" in the top-level comments. I do, however, see people resent having their way of life (and of making a living) called into question. The one particularly snide top-level comment I saw was agreeing with you.
All of the anti-big-tech comments I've ever seen that are flagged are flagged because they blatantly break the guidelines and/or are contentless and don't contribute in any meaningful sense aside from trying to incite outrage.
And those should be flagged.
They show up in the HN Active section quite regularly.
And virtually anything even remotely related to Twitter or most Elon Musk-related companies almost instantly get the hook.
I explicitly enable flagged and dead because sometimes there are nuggets in there which provide interesting context to what people think.
I will never flag anything. I dont get it.
Disappearing OT/ads/extreme ad hominems is a positive thing imo.
I vouch for things that I disagree with if they make good points. I have flagged things.
IMO the worst thing pg ever did for this site is to say that downvoting could be used for disagreement. I still bemoan the removal of downvote scores, and still wish for Slashdot-style voting, meta-moderation, and personalition of content scores.
