TL;DR: Run your platform to confirm to the desires of the loudest users. Declare anything your loudest users don't want to see to be "flamewar" content and remove it.
My take: "Flamebait" is a completely accurate label for the content your loudest users don't want to see, but it's by definition your loudest users who are actually doing the flaming, and by definition they disagree with the things they're flaming. So all this does is reward people for flamewars, while the moderators effectively crusade on behalf of the flamers. But it's "okay" because, by definition, the moderators are going to be people who agree with the political views of the loudest viewers (if they weren't they'd get heckled off), so the mods you actually get will be perfectly happy with this situation. Neither the mods nor the loudest users have any reason to dislike or see any problem with this arrangement. So why is it a problem? Because it leads to what I'll call a flameocracy: whoever flames loudest gets their way as the platform will align with their desires (in order to reduce how often they flame). The mods and the platform are held hostage by these users but are suffering literal Stockholm Syndrome as they fear setting off their abusers (the flamers).
My take: "Flamebait" is a completely accurate label for the content your loudest users don't want to see, but it's by definition your loudest users who are actually doing the flaming, and by definition they disagree with the things they're flaming. So all this does is reward people for flamewars, while the moderators effectively crusade on behalf of the flamers. But it's "okay" because, by definition, the moderators are going to be people who agree with the political views of the loudest viewers (if they weren't they'd get heckled off), so the mods you actually get will be perfectly happy with this situation. Neither the mods nor the loudest users have any reason to dislike or see any problem with this arrangement. So why is it a problem? Because it leads to what I'll call a flameocracy: whoever flames loudest gets their way as the platform will align with their desires (in order to reduce how often they flame). The mods and the platform are held hostage by these users but are suffering literal Stockholm Syndrome as they fear setting off their abusers (the flamers).