If your question is about what the flagged label is about : https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Mechanically any user with sufficient karma can click "flag" on comments, enough people clicking that and it get's flagged and people without show dead on it don't see it.

I didn't flag your comment, but I came very close to doing so.

Personally I couldn't figure out what you were trying to say. What am I supposed to be deciding for myself? Are the organized groups you're referring to companies trying to use GPL code without a license? Groups trying to use the GPL as a tool to get access to other companies closed source code? IP lawyers trying to make a profit? Something else?

Flagging nonsense (as in literally not-understandable comments) seems like the right thing to do to me. I would have flagged it over that, but for michaelmrose's reply that indicated that they at least managed to parse your comment.

I'm also generally very wary of the phrase "decide for yourself", it's not objectively incorrect, but it comes across as asking people to ignore better informed people's opinions, which is the exact opposite of what you should do when reading comment sections on the internet.

I think another commenters point that you're making fairly baseless accusations against people who like the GPL might be correct, but that didn't weigh in to my decision to flag it or not because I honestly didn't (and still don't) understand your comment. If I agreed with them that that is what your comment was doing, I would have been more likely to flag it - because insulting groups of people rarely leads to fruitful discussion.

Hopefully that helps...

It’s not up to the moderators. It’s likely because you made a fairly baseless accusation about people who prefer GPL.

Possibly because punctuation, capitalization, and miscellaneous mistakes make the comment really hard to parse. Some people may just give up and regard the comment as what it "smells" like: The type of troll comment you often see on HN.

Even allowing for that it is worded rather... inciteful.

I parsed your comment as: "Some organized people will take advantage of GPL software, very few care and are willing to defend it, while the vast majority are indifferent. I do not intend to elaborate."

I thought it was provocative to choose a side, yes, as in "anti-indifferent" ... I did not intend or even see it as 'troll' ..

Get enough downvotes fast enough and it gets flagged

No, flags and downvotes are independent. [flagged] means users clicked 'flag'.

Sometimes moderators also add [flagged] to a post, but much less often, and we didn't do that here.

thx dang, perhaps it was lazy of me but I did not intend to break guidelines here

I didn't consider it flag worthy personally I thought it was merely unclear and needed clarification as to what you were asserting.

yeah - it was lazy and sort of political.. that's true and in hindsight maybe not helpful (downvotes) but to be 'flagged' means it broke some guidelines, which I doubt. It does need clarification, agree.

flagged just means enough users flagged it. Most tossed-off one-liners are eminently flaggable because they break the hn prime directive of 'curious conversation'.