I don't know what "many" would be here, but it's obviously too many, since the flagging of these topics is really constant. And that flags are used by people because they are "annoyed by" or "don't care" about these things is stated by people all the time, who never followed up when I challenge them. So that doesn't give me the impression of good faith. If the reasons are benign and not to suppress awareness and discussion -- in short, not people thinking themselves the lords of others -- then nobody would have a problem with people opting out with something like "ignore thread flags" option.