You can install "Selectivity for HN" Greasemonkey script to hide those stories. It reduced my front page to just about ~10 relevant posts. It might help to fla

You can install "Selectivity for HN" Greasemonkey script to hide those stories. It reduced my front page to just about ~10 relevant posts. It might help to flag those posts too, but if you try it they will most likely just remove flag privilege for you, since this Snowden thing seems to be a new fetish here on HN, similar to the time Steve Jobs died when you couldn't read anything else. Btw, from the HN guide: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." These Snowden/NSA/PRISM articles are pretty much the definition of off-topic, and it seems that we can't fight them out of front page, since we can't downvote posts, and flagging them will just lead to removal of flag privilege.