> Downvotes on HN, as I understand it, are only for bad manners or the obvious wrongness, even if throwed subjectively. They are very much thrown casually and

> Downvotes on HN, as I understand it, are only for bad manners or the obvious wrongness, even if throwed subjectively. They are very much thrown casually and often to suppress opinions or to rate limit people without arguing I have had situations where I expressed that I will play the devil's advocate hoping to get interesting conversations out of it, and they certainly happened, but I was quickly rate limited. I have heavily downvoted when I called out certain beliefs and positions while providing citations in favour of my position. I have seen comments and posts wrongfully flagged, and I have observed in real time waves of downvotes to comments (by keeping track of the account's karma over time) without any other form engagement in the removed post. I have had people downvote all of my criticism for a particular post / claim / approach because the author was famous without proper engagement or assessment of my claims or arguments. The responses were all woefully uneducated in the subject and resorted to insults and other juvenile remarks instead of substance. At the same time, I saw ad-hominems and otherwise detestable and inexcusable behaviour getting excused and even upvoted.