> flagged, which is meant for spam and offtopic links

It's meant for bad links. Spam and off-topic articles are included, but that is not its exclusive use. For example, a post about how much the author hates gay startup founders is more on-topic than a lot of stuff that gets posted here, but is nonetheless inappropriate on numerous levels.

I don't know if I would flag a news story about a Microsoft ad campaign, but I'd probably at least consider it, because those are not generally very intellectually stimulating.