I'm not following the argument here, but turning off the flags on a given story doesn't turn HN into a free-for-all on a topic (on the contrary, we don't want too much repetition of any topic), and certainly the guidelines continue to apply as much as anymore. More, in fact ("Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).