
Ask HN: Why are articles critical of cryptocurrencies being flagged? - cliffy
This article was on the front page just now: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;louwrentius.com&#x2F;cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental-to-society.html<p>but got flagged for some unknown reason. I can only guess because it is strongly critical of cryptocurrencies.<p>Is flagging just community driven? As in, if an article gets flagged enough is it automatically taken down? Or does a mod have to step in?<p>If a mod has to step in, then why are they censoring articles critical of cryptocurrencies?
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verdverm
Both mods and community can result in a dead post. (You can see them by going
to your profile and changing the dropdown)

w.r.t. cryptos, I think this community is less interested in the topic than
two years ago. Turns out most of the content is either bs and shilling. This
community is more interested in blockchain, less so about cryptocurrencies.
Technical articles or those that teach something interesting do well.

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dang
Mods didn't touch that submission. Users flagged it. We can only guess why
users flag things, but I suppose it was a combination of (1) users who felt it
wasn't a substantive article and (2) users who are fatigued by the controversy
around cryptocurrency. That controversy is many years old by now, has been
discussed to death, and leads to poor-quality generic discussion
([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&sort=byDate&type=comment)).
In case it helps, articles that are favorable about cryptocurrency get an even
more hostile reception, especially anything reminiscent of the crypto-hype of
8-10 years ago.

This doesn't mean that articles on the topic can't do well on HN. It just
means that the bar for substantiveness is high.

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louwrentius
Thank you for asking. This article was a great experiment, despite it being
flagged.

Because nobody could answer the question I posed in the article.

To be clear: I'm quite convinced that I was being flagged by the visitors and
that's why it was removed.

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chc
Articles are automatically taken down after they're flagged enough. Plenty of
articles critical of cryptocurrencies have been posted here. It's most likely
people just thought the article was blogspam.

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gt565k
Maybe it got flagged because it's an abomination of an article. Did you even
read the damn thing? The author has no authority to speak on the subject
seeing as he does not even recognize the work many crypto projects are doing
to help the unbanked and solve energy consumption (PoS vs PoW).

Crypto fills a niche, it's the cash of the internet providing an unregulated
unrestricted ability to transfer value.

A number of the negative points in the article could have been said about
regular fiat currency.

This article is a one sided brain fart by someone who knows nothing about the
subject they are writing about.

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continuational
The article brings up a lot of points, and whether they hold up to scrutiny
should be dealt with in the comments, not by flagging the article.

~~~
verdverm
The article gets flagged when the commenting becomes a flame war, much like
this post is becoming with people flagging and down voting based on emotion.

Case in point why crypto doesn't belong here, too many people getting too
emotionally attached to their ideas to have a civil coversation.

Please downvote and flag more things you dislike for personal reasons.

