There is a large contingent of pro-Tesla readers on HN that cannot abide by any criticism of Tesla.

Articles critical of Tesla always get flagged, and most of the time dang unflags them, especially if they're from newspapers like LAT.

But what's their point? Are those odd TSLA shareholders?

Most who claim that HN has a rabid and irrational pro-Tesla cult must have missed the last seven years of incredibly critical commentary. I started noticing in 2015. Maybe I'll put together a montage one day. The claims of a pro-Tesla cult are certainly more widespread than uncritical fanboyism.

Can they build in a mechanism to mitigate baseless flagging?

"most of the time dang unflags them" is that mechanism.

If I found a reliable way to automate the recognition of bad-faith user interactions I would sell it to google and retire before bringing it to HN.

edit: Also, apparently, users can "vouch" for posts which presumably is just the inverse of flagging a post.

You can vouch for a comment, but not a post. (Except by emailing dang.)

Well, for example, deducting karma (or whatever) from people who flag stuff that dang unflags.

Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but my guess is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25362819 if anyone cares.

For some reason there's a cult that believes Elon and Tesla can do no wrong.