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In that case are downvotes censorship too?
by andybak 4y ago
In that case are downvotes censorship too?
- mistrial9 4y agoeasy answer - not at all. The difference there is, flagged results in 'no one can read this' which is an act of censorship, while a downvote is part of an ongoing engagement process.
- dang 4y agoAnyone can read [dead] comments on HN if they turn 'showdead' on in their profile. We never delete posts outright unless the author asks us to. Users flagged your comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31810870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31810870. We can only guess why users flag things, but it's not hard to point to site guidelines which your comment broke - such as the ones that asks people not to fulminate, post flamebait, or use the site for ideological battle. You can call that 'censorship' if you like - people use the word to refer to any moderation they don't like - but (regardless of what's going on in users' heads when they flag) moderators don't think of this process in terms of banning specific views. That is, we don't much care what your views are. We care about threads not degenerating into flamewar dreck.
- mistrial9 4y agothank you for the clarification dang -- as usual your calls to order and insight here make sense. I will keep striving on that