Definitely not—nearly all [dead] posts are killed by software, other than the [flagged][dead] ones which are killed by user flags.

> nearly all [dead] posts are killed by software

What do you mean by that?

Broken link detectors?

I don't get it.

HN's software contains spam filters and similar things that automatically kill certain posts. Those get marked as [dead] and removed from public view. [dead] posts are visible only to users who have 'showdead' set to 'yes' in their profile.

Other posts that have been heavily flagged by users get marked as [flagged][dead]. Those have been killed by user flags, not software.

Have I answered your question?

Yes you have.

Thank you.

I don’t know why it’s supposed to be some secret but there is absolutely an effort here from multiple parties to minimise conversation on the topic.

We can debate the reasons and logic as to why that might be but to pretend it isn’t happening is just silly.

I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting there aren't flags, and a lot of them. The argument is that this is pretty much how HN works and is supposed to, for most repetitive topics. You can certainly make the case it should work some different way, either in general or for this topic specifically. But it's not some nefarious plot.

You can see an alternate ranking of front-page stories that ignores flags here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/active

As I write, 4 out of the top 10 stories on "active" appear related to Musk, Trump, or both (numbers 4, 5, 8, 10):

1. Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data

2. Apple Ordered by UK to Create Global iCloud Encryption Backdoor

3. Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

4. A German court rules: X must provide researchers access to data

5. Elon Musk's Demolition Crew

6. The origins of 60-Hz as a power frequency

7. Stop Using Zip Codes for Geospatial Analysis

8. Announcing the data.gov archive

9. U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users' encrypted accounts

10. Feds Halt the National Electric Vehicle Charging Program

If you prefer what you see on "active", you can bookmark that as your standard entry point to HN. I flag stories when they appear to be getting repetitive. I haven't actually done that with any of these stories, but I have previously done it with submissions about COVID, OpenAI, and Matt Mullenweg when they come in waves.

If you go on the further pages of /active you'll find a lot of flagged posts. An epidemic of flagging by the looks of it.

I'm not interested in minimizing conversation on the topic! I just want the conversation to be fresh in each major thread. That requires enough new information to support a substantively different discussion. I didn't see that in the OP and I don't see that in most of the submissions that get posted about this topic.

In case anyone is interested: the way we approach situations like this comes out of what happened with the Snowden avalanche of 2013. It seems obvious now, but at the time we weren't clear about the difference between articles containing significant new information [1] and copycat / follow-up posts [2]. Tons of repetitive stories were on the frontpage, and there was a backlash from users complaining about it. The current principles around to handle this came from reflecting on how we could have handled that situation differently.

What we need here, in order to keep having major threads about this topic, is a story containing significant new information—something that moves the needle on the discussion. If one of those is getting flagged, I'd like to know about it!

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...