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Ask HN: why is my question flagged?

3 points by the_enigma ↗ HN
Is there any possibility to ban paywalled content from HN like Newyorker Bloomberg et al? It's always so frustrating when they suck away my bandwidth to tell me to pay up. I never did and I never will pay them but it is so annoying being tricked by their click-bait content on my favourite website. ++++++++++++ and why is my first question here flagged and how can one find out who flagged it? How is it possible to unflag content again? ++++++++++++

4 comments

[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 23.3 ms ] thread
forgotmypw
Flag it whenever you see it.

Post a comment protesting it whenever you see it.

Use a browser extension to disable all the links.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
tomhoward
It's flagged because it gets discussed all the time, basically on every submission from a paywalled site, and it's been covered in the guidelines for years.

The community consensus is that HN is better with links from sites that have paywalls (NYT, New Yorker, WSJ, The Economist etc are some of the most influential publications in the world, so banning them would diminish HN's relevance and usefulness), as long as there is a known workaround to the paywall. Usually someone will post a workaround in the discussion thread, but https://archive.is/ is usually your best bet.

If it's a "hard paywall" (i.e., no workaround exists), then the submission should not appear on HN.