I think your first impulse was the right one ... ;-) In general, HN threads fail on pure politics topics. (Sorry, friends, for the scold, but it's true.) We don't have enough people who have expertise on politics and media. Add this to a fact-free piece like OP, and you get blech.

The current administration and its cheerleaders have figured out how to turn trolling into a weapon, leaving the NYT befuddled as its model of well-intentioned fact-based debate (on the oped page), and "above-it-all" stenographic reporting (on the news pages), has broken down publicly. For earlier failures, see the boxes marked "Hillary's e-mails", and "Iraq, Invasion of" -- but it has gotten worse recently.

The NYT still does great info-graphics, non-politics reporting, and deep investigative scoops. Under Baquet (who I don't like as editor - I've been a regular reader since the mid-90s), it did successfully transition to a pay model for subscriptions -- and it has a lot of subscribers. This is more than most papers can say!

But, as noted, there are real problems with NYT reporting. They have not adapted in some key areas. This will require fundamental change that Baquet seems unable to do. Jay Rosen of NYU is my go-to source for analysis here (blog and twitter). See in particular: https://pressthink.org/2020/06/battleship-newspaper/

After looking at some of the comments on this page, I'm now wondering if not flagging the OP was a mistake ... ;-)

Thanks for the link to Rosen's page; I'll take a look.

> I hesitated before upvoting the OP, and even considered flagging it, given its controversial author (with whom I disagree) and its potential to fuel ideologically driven, opinionated arguments (in which no one wins and everyone loses). However, I decided to upvote the OP because I feel it is, in the end, about a topic that is of utmost interest of -- and widely considered important by -- most people on HN: free speech.

There's another reason: because it directly impacts technology and the companies that many of us work with. This is a Silicon Valley news blog, at the end of the day, and it's unavoidable how Twitter, Facebook, Google and such have entered the debate. They're inextricable from the debate.

This controversy around cancel culture really could not TRULY exist without the ease with which you can search a history, stick a video on someone with a phone, or to expand on this a bit, use algorithms to target people with headlines and track how viral a headline got.

Why would you flag it without reading the article?

The parent comment made no claim that they were going to flag the post without reading it. Just that it was a controversial post, so it's less clear if good discussion would evolve from it. (So I give them the benefit of the doubt that they did read it.)

You nailed the problem, this needs to stop.

Funnily enough I'm getting pretty actively downvoted. It's sad... I always thought of Hacker News as a place to have friendly discussion.

You accused the person of contemplating flagging the submission without reading the article. Where do they say they didn't read it first?

Instead of downvoting, we need to understand each other better. So many centrists and right-wing views are shunned. I don't agree with them and if they're obviously racist/flamebait, we shouldn't feed it, but if someone has a dissenting view about liberal/progressive stances, we should listen to them. Ask them why they think that way. That's so much more interesting to me.

> widely considered important by -- everyone

I'm not sure this is nearly as universal as you think, even on here.

Maybe you're right. I changed it to "most people."

Can't have "controversial authors" here... that I suppose is her point about the media.