> The front page doesn’t need 5 posts from random people talking about how they’re moving to mastodon and boy isn’t toot such a weird name for tweets.

Nope, it doesn't.

> Substantive things will get through (this one did).

Are you only flagging the non-substantive things? Because that's not what you imply above ("flagging all Twitter/mastodon posts").

I flag almost everything I see, but I am just one vote.

If it’s substantive it will have enough in the other direction that it doesn’t matter.

And it’s not like I have an army of bot accounts continually refreshing and flagging.

I’m just using my one vote to signify I’m not interested in hearing about Twitter drama.

HN downranks posts that get both a lot of flags AND a lot of votes so

>If it’s substantive it will have enough in the other direction that it doesn’t matter.

Is just flat out wrong.

Thanks for the correction.

It still achieves my objective of less Twitter drama on the front page.

imron has it right on this point, because upvotes and flags are in a sort of tug-of-war. Minimal flags can't defeat maximal upvotes.