Given that I downvoted you and your comment did not turn gray, I have to assume that you've been up-voted by other people. Shooting down a blog article written

Given that I downvoted you and your comment did not turn gray, I have to assume that you've been up-voted by other people. Shooting down a blog article written by somebody from his heart, while upvoting yellow journalism — that's a common phenomenon here on HN — and I should know because this is my 9th year as an HN visitor and contributor. So such mean comments being upvoted, that doesn't look good, but on the other hand I can't say that I'm surprised. But to answer your particular comment ... HN actually does a pretty good job at detecting voting rings, along with upvotes triggered by mailing / social list. HN's detection is so aggressive in fact that it has many false positives, making it easy to bury stories you don't like ;-) And to blog authors out there — please write more, as I'm interested in genuine feelings and opinions, not by PR pieces written by corrupt media outlets.