I have seen very little evidence that bad-faith flagging is actually punished at any appreciable scale on this site.
Either the flagging tools are too easy to get hold of for new users, or the culture of flagging on this site is positively rotten due to the lack of enforcement or a too-specific definition of what "bad faith" is.
Gamified moderation tools require oversight.
I think many people have a fundamental misunderstanding of what and why people flag on this site. And as someone who also used to have this misunderstanding, I'll explain how I changed my mind on this topic.
A lot of people view flagging as "that is a troll post/comment" or "that was made in bad faith". But I think another reason many people flag is "this topic is highly unlikely to generate any useful discussion" or "this topic may be fine for discussion, but not on HN".
FWIW, I disagree with the flagging in this instance. Most importantly, I did learn something useful in the comments (the bit about how Apple previously almost banned Tumbler due to unintentional CSAM). But I also don't really begrudge folks who voted to flag. Political topics always have a lower bar for flagging IMO, because they nearly always devolve into useless tribal warfare - useless tribal warfare that you can easily get in spades on nearly any other forum/social media site online. And just look at the comments on this post. Most of them I'd characterize as generally uninsightful, and even disregarding my opinion, tons of the comments here are downvoted. So if some folks are a little too trigger happy to flag because they're at least trying to keep HN's uniquely high value discussions, I don't really blame them.
So while I disagree with the flagging in this instance, I also disagree that HN generally has a problem with bad-faith flagging.
> A lot of people view flagging as "that is a troll post/comment" or "that was made in bad faith". But I think another reason many people flag is "this topic is highly unlikely to generate any useful discussion" or "this topic may be fine for discussion, but not on HN".
I have seen this explanation several times, and it seems like an unfalsifiable conjecture that assumes a lot more good faith than one can expect out of a somewhat-mainstream tech-focused social media site which does not vet the users that sign up for it.
Then again, in fairness, my view is also conjecture. However, I've also noticed in controversial threads it's not uncommon to see reasonably-stated posts getting flagged/dead, and one would expect to see a lot less of this behavior if users were actually at reasonable risk of getting their flagging privileges revoked. So I at the very least feel like there's some basis to my conjecture.
Of course, the ultimate problem is that the flagging behavior seems largely absent of accountability. We don't know who flagged the post, and we also have no insight into how often the moderators of this site yank away moderation tools from their users.
> this topic is highly unlikely to generate any useful discussion
Some things need saying.
It doesn't always have to be a spirited, constructive rich debate in the comments. Some times it's just okay for one of us to tell it like it is.
I agree there are plenty of things that don't need repeating, don't need redundant commentary, and a billion etceteras, but the US is dangerously broken and the tech industry need to do their part to steer her away from endless fascism. This needs to be said, heard, and acted upon.