Here's one example of systematic downvoting that I can think of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7836937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7836937 So s

Here's one example of systematic downvoting that I can think of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7836937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7836937 So sum it up, me and somebody named jsmthrowaway happened to point out some painful realities regarding the Rust programming language. The facts we brought up must have hurt the feelings of some within the Rust community (several prominent figures were involved with that discussion), and so numerous factual and perfectly legitimate comments of ours within that thread of discussion basically ended up censored. Now, I personally don't care about karma, or whether people agree or disagree with opinions I express or facts that I may happen to point out. What I don't like, however, is seeing perfectly good content grayed out, regardless of who posted it. Censorship is always harmful. These days, I find the grayed out comments more disruptive than beneficial. Many of them are perfectly valid content. Some of them often are quite insightful, in a way that some people probably find painful. So instead of being comments that I feel comfortable ignoring, I usually find myself trying to read the grayed out ones even though they've been obscured and are harder to read. They're often the most worthwhile comments within a submission's discussion.