Judging by how often this gets slammed when I’ve discussed it in the past, I’ll assume it’s contrarian enough. On HN, downvotes serve little purpose, assuming

Judging by how often this gets slammed when I’ve discussed it in the past, I’ll assume it’s contrarian enough. On HN, downvotes serve little purpose, assuming that the user base actually believes the notions of superiority and quality of discussion here compared to other sites on the internet. For explicitly off-topic or guideline violating comments, flags exist. Downvotes seem to serve no other purpose than as a low effort “I disagree” or “I don’t like this” which wouldn’t be an acceptable reply if it were a comment.