Please, please do revert to your original behaviour (which also is mine).
This provides leeway for anyone (e.g. the poster) not to concur, as anyone shall be free to have a different opinion / draw different conclusions (e.g. to fully disagree); that is what plurality is about.
Triggering the chain flagging a post → hiding a post → erasing a post does not provide this leeway. It enforces the assessment of a single person onto all users of this forum: That is what totalitarism is about, though in general it is a group of people, e.g. a government enforcing their views in totality. This is why I have been so active in the thread “Forum censorship - The Issue”. It has been interesting (well almost shocking) for me to see that many people do not understand these concepts, refuse to think about them and are happy to be able to suppress the posts they do not like, but pissed if their posts / opinions are suppressed.
And it was just so blatantly irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Yes, maybe. Did it do any harm? Absolutely not IMO, in contrast to spam.