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HN unfortunately has started downvoting to show disagreement. It’s happened in lockstep with the political radicalization and censorship across the internet, e
by bopbeepboop 6y ago
HN unfortunately has started downvoting to show disagreement.
It’s happened in lockstep with the political radicalization and censorship across the internet, eg Twitter and YouTube.
Contrary to fluffy language, HN is a censorious community that uses downvotes and shadowbans to shape narratives.
Edit:
For overly literal readers — note, I’m commenting on rates not saying it never happened historically.
It went from being rare and limited to contentious topics to routinely finding quality replies buried for wronngthink.
- maxharris 6y agoI wonder if it would help if we had the option to use agree/disagree arrows that pointed horizontally, in addition to the upvote/downvote buttons we have already. I often encounter comments that I disagree with, but are well-argued nonetheless, and I wish there were a way to indicate that.
- bopbeepboop 6y agoI certainly think it’s worth trying that out. It creates bad incentives to have quality and agreement in the same signal.
- Phil-bitplex 6y agoWhat if instead of arrows we had words "Agree" "Disagree" "Interesting" "Not Interesting" The agree/disagree options would only be visible on comments within an article
- Shivetya 6y agoI would prefer no down arrow and no flag. Let something die from lack of popularity. and the OP you are responding to is nearly dead for stating an obvious problem on this site, down voting is rampant if not flagging.
- klyrs 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691
- esyir 6y agoOn an aside, overly literal readings are imo an example of blatant strawmanning; rather than dealing with the crux of an argument or statement, instead revoke a technicality and consider it settled.