>You should flag stories because of content, not provenance.
How can I flag a story because of its content when I am unable to view the content? If a story has no content for me, I will likely flag it, sorry.
If there is an easy alternative posted and the linkbait sounds compelling enough, I might try it.
Otherwise, it might get a flag for 'no content at this link'.
The choice is between two bad options: having to do a bit of work and losing many substantive articles. For HN, it's obvious which is the lesser evil. The policy has been the status quo here forever.
Just so it's clear: this is a sure way to lose your flagging privileges on HN
Are you seriously suggesting that someone from YCombinator will remove an account's flagging privileges because the account flagged links which did not point to any meaningful content?
What should we be flagging? Links to content that we disagree with?