Entirely agree about political stories and rust projects du jour (I’d go as far as associating out-of-topic posts on $random_software about how it’s be much better in rust).
Just ignore/downvote/flag and move on, though. Nobody is forcing anyone else to read anything, and it’s normal that some people here are interested in things in which I’m not. None of us is the arbiter of what should or should not be on HN. Not us mere posters, anyway.
I am not clear about flagging, I don't want to get myself tagged because I flag-ed someone 3rd submission of his weekend Rust project, or those COVID conspiracies/magic cures, I could offend some free-speech extremist if I have the opinion that the HN is not the correct place for that.
Yeah flagging is the most extreme, for things that really don’t have anything to do here. It’s rare that a flag-able story ends up on the front page, to be fair, but a COVID magical cure or a propaganda piece for the usual quacks would fit all the criteria to be flagged to oblivion.
I don’t flag random projects, just ignore them (I know some people here like them, it’s not my thing but it is harmless). I downvote obnoxious comments about how something needs to be rewritten in rust in unrelated threads, though.
Just ignore/downvote/flag and move on, though. Nobody is forcing anyone else to read anything, and it’s normal that some people here are interested in things in which I’m not. None of us is the arbiter of what should or should not be on HN. Not us mere posters, anyway.