> the most notable difference between Hacker News and Reddit is that it's impossible to downvote anything on Hacker News. [..] It's an interesting design decisi

> the most notable difference between Hacker News and Reddit is that it's impossible to downvote anything on Hacker News. [..] It's an interesting design decision, but ultimately a bad one, in my opinion. That's not true (as the author realized himself). And I don't agree with the author; letting people downvote is unfortunate in my opinion, and a bad design decision. The possibility to downvote encourages misuse. I don't see any reason for the majority of downvotes I come across; mostly it's just other opinions that don't suit a few people; often it's even the correct presentation of the facts that has been downvoted. Most people on HN are anonymous. Downvoting is even more anonymous; there is usually no record from who the downvotes come. If you're interested in the effects of anonymity to people, watch this part of Zimbardo's very interesting lecture: https://youtu.be/OsFEV35tWsg?t=959 https://youtu.be/OsFEV35tWsg?t=959. The anonymity of the web, or the masses, gives these people a power that obviously overwhelms them. There were experiments which demonstrated how it can play out when ordinary people suddenly gain power (see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment). The possibility to downvote promotes the bad in people. And it is not even necessary. If you like a comment or story for whatever reason, you can upvote. That's already enough to promote popular content, and demote unpopular content. And if a comment violates site rules, it can be flagged. Of course also flagging can be misused (as it is very popular e.g. on Lobsters); this can be mitigated in that the admin kicks out people who misuse flagging. And that's likely the issue: the admin prefers delegating work to the community, which is likely the main and only reason why the downvoting features persists.