This has been my experience as well, and I've been browsing HN since at least 2009. Downvotes/flagging are used much more heavily to express political disagreem

This has been my experience as well, and I've been browsing HN since at least 2009. Downvotes/flagging are used much more heavily to express political disagreement as well now (which biases what gets downvoted due to the left-leaning bias in tech) and I think there is more politics in general (but that is true of media more broadly).