No, it was a vote.  The flag icon, as well as calling it a flag and that insipid description are completely made up by the UI.

this is how i would flag this post in the cli
vote sigmajin richardcrill berniesanders-just-flagged-my-post-is-there-anything-i-can-do  -100 true

this is how i would upvote it

vote sigmajin richardcrill berniesanders-just-flagged-my-post-is-there-anything-i-can-do  100 true

Now if you want to follow a bunch of made up rules, thats your perogative.  But the whales do not.  So what youre really supporting is a double standard.  1 set of completely arbitrary rules for most users and a completely different set of rules for the whales.

what happens on the blockchain is what matters, and the UI misrepresenting reality in this respect is counterproductive