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The downvotes on HN are really out of control, it's acceptable to "downvote if you disagree"; I guess I can accept that as a social convention - but not if the

The downvotes on HN are really out of control, it's acceptable to "downvote if you disagree"; I guess I can accept that as a social convention - but not if the platform is configured to physically hide, flag and censor downvoted comments. The two features make for a toxic combo: instead of simply enforcing "civil" conversation, downvotes are used as a political tool to strongly dissuade contrarian views, even when such views are expressed in high effort, well argued posts. Some sacred cows of the community are criticizing US international position or criticizing YC companies. Other-times, the political slant depends on the type of crowd the headline will attract: in a topic against GDPR, self driving cars or global warming you are guaranteed to attract downvotes when supporting these issues, with the opposite true in the converse threads.

jsoc815 8y ago
Agreed. I really have a problem w/ the censuring of someone for asking a question or for answering one w/factual information. For a group of people on pride themselves on being logic-driven and smarter-than-the rest, the behaviors I see here show the crowd to be pretty well positioned w/i the 'bell' of the curve, if not to the left. Actually speaks volumes about why some of the products coming out of the field are what they are and/or end up w/the 'unintended' problems that are revealed. For all of the probable smarts in this community, there is (in addition to a general sense of entitlement) a clear lack of breath and depth of knowledge of the rest of the world. And I find it unfortunate that rather than acknowledging that and moving to address those faults, people revert to the see no evil model, which, again, makes much of the HN crew very average, not exceptional. Oh well...