Unfortunately, flagging is heavily abused here on HN. Criticism of adtech and attempts to defend privacy laws will bring out flagging in droves; almost as if some HN'ers salaries are dependent on opposing such laws!
Some sort of meta-moderation system to prevent abuse of flagging would be welcome.
Unfortunately HN is likely astroturfed just as much as any other forum, despite the otherwise seemingly substantiveness of HN compared to sites like Reddit. And unfortunately there's no way to cancel out bad faith flagging and downvoting the same way you can reply to bad faith commenting. It's more invisible and easier to abuse (once the karma thresholds have been reached, which isn't hard).
Some sort of meta-moderation system to prevent abuse of flagging would be welcome.