I don't like the mob thing either but it's how large group dynamics on the internet work (by default). We try to mitigate it where we can but there's not a lot of knowledge about how to do that.
Newer, widely purposed tech that hasn't taken hold yet is the one I see most often. Where people have invested non-trivial time. Eg the rust crew which I choose as an example because I quite like rust so I'm not bashing the tech here.
There are bogus "here's a cool library/app/thing" articles which get to the front page where I scratch my head and then discover "oh, it's boring as hell but in rust." I see people expressing legitimate points of view (which I frequently disagree with) about cases where C might be a better choice or where a rust re-write doesn't buy the user much that are immediately massively downvoted. It's mob mentality, is it organised or self-organising? Doesn't matter either way. Makes rustaceans look pretty stupid though. And yes you can do this for non-rust stuff and it happens. And it's easy to see why. You invest a ton of time into a tech you really want it to succeed to maximise the payoff for doing so.
What do you do to counter it? Anything at all?
HN is gamified on karma - an idea taken from slashdot with a mildly different implementation but a really good idea that has been under-applied accross the web. In this game popular in the zeitgeist massively trumps interesting, well written, thought provoking and well supported. Sure by the time you've got 50 points you probably should stop caring and you've got karma to burn to be thoughtfully unpopular, but if you take the time you probably want that seen and it's the stuff you want to see - which is kind of the point.
The other question I have is why has there been next to nothing here (that I've noticed - maybe I missed it?) About the twitter files revelations and their importance or lack thereof? Intervention? If so please would you share the thinking behind it?
The point being, to suggest what you could do differently requires a clue on what you actually do now, which I'm not at all sure I have.
Re the Twitter stuff: there have been quite a few major threads. They also attract a ton of user flags. I'm personally open to the topic but the chalice is so poisoned that I'm not sure HN can discuss it in an interesting way, and interestingness is what we're going for here.
Because flagging also affects visibility it's clear that many users simply use flagging as a kind of "super downvote" which it presumably isn't meant to be. Their goal is to suppress interesting discussion of interesting things uncomfortable for their world view, not to clean up spam. I always read with showdead on because the sheer quantity of interesting, useful posts that get flagged is well beyond the value of the flagging mechanism.
HN seems to be stuck in a form of circular reasoning in which flags are taken as a sign that some people are (or claiming to be) upset, therefore the discussion won't be "good", so it is OK to suppress it, which then encourages people to flag things. But this just empowers aggressive minorities who weaponize their own feelings to shut down interesting debates for everyone else. It seems counter to the mission.
A simple fix: put the ability to flag behind a very high karma threshold, write out a clear policy for how it's meant to be used i.e. what is considered rule breaking and what isn't, then take away flagging privs for people who consistently flag things that don't meet the policy.