Perhaps it’s time to sideline the internet when evaluating collective reality
My own anecdotal experience on reddit and HN is that much of the heavy lifting can be done by just a few people "guarding new."  This is a good thing sometimes, efficiency is nice, but it can also be manipulated.<p>There seem to be some keywords that trigger a pre-organized group to descend upon a post in New and downvote/report/flag it into oblivion.<p>There was a piece documenting how easily, and cheaply, it is to manipulate reddit a few years ago. I can't seem to find it now.<p>I would like to add that sometimes my posts get flagged, such as a recent one complaining of poor writing, and that's fair enough.<p>meta: hilariously, this piece was flagged while I was writing this comment, so I vouched for it.<p>If someone could give some reasons why TFA is not interesting and deserves flagging, I would love to hear them.