The unrealistic flaws of the video are fairly obvious and don't really need pointing out, and sometimes the endless nasal pedantry takes its toll on the mind
Some of the flaws are obvious. Some of them aren’t. Either way they can lead to very interesting conversations and get the mind thinking. You should be flagging blind hatred not observations and criticism.
You’re literally shutting down free speech. Metaphorically you’re creating a walled compound where all the “happy” people can pretend everything is fine and dandy meanwhile on the opposite side of the wall is a bunch of unhappy homeless people who literally had their house taken away by the people in the compound just because they happened to disagree with something one of the powerful people said at a dinner party.
You can vouch for comments to unflag them by clicking on the timestamp. I have done so multiple times when it was clear the author had made an interesting point but did so in an unduly hostile manner. However, the ratio of flagged comments that didn't deserve their fate is incredibly low.
The free speech martyrdom angle makes sense on paper, and it's true that there are users that act as commissars, but the practical reality is that no interesting discussion actually flows from the flagged content. This is something every online community eventually learns through experience.
Most of the time, the abstract idea of free speech is the only merit these comments have, and from that we can also ask if flagging is not an expression of speech in and of itself.
Well I’d be interested to know what part of the Hacker News guidelines this comment I made has violated and why you have deemed the ensuing discussion uninteresting and adding nothing to the discussion.
Thank you. It’s really not a nice feeling to be silenced, especially when it feels completely unjustified. Makes you question reality itself. I hope the powers that be unflag it.
To clarify my earlier point as I now realize I sounded more hostile than I intended to. Sometimes, people will flag for aesthetic reasons even if the comment doesn't technically deserve it. They might be tired of negativity, and click the flag button in a moment of weakness just for the experience of being excited about things again. There also is a separate phenomenon of dead or removed comments usually meriting it, even taking into account trigger-happy moderation.
In this case, your comment spawned helpful discussion so I'll happily vouch for it if it is ever killed.
