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Comment by manmal | Hacker News Reader

Is "I know that I'm going to get downvoted" the new opening argument? Forestalling criticism does usually work in discussions, but it should not be necessary here. If you get downvoted, so be it. You are not your HN karma. (I know I'm gonna be downvoted for this ;) )

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>...it should not be necessary here

I think it's a lame figure of speech that's only used to paint yourself as some kind of underdog hero.

The top comment (!) in the "AMP for email is a terrible idea"-thread [0] is a post starting with this exact phrase. Obviously your idea wasn't so controversial after all, so just let the users decide the up-/down-votes.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16372234

In such cases, I like to assist in making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. I understand a degree of criticism forestalling, but when I read it, it distracts from the commenter’s point.

Is fear of being downvoted a new kind of self-censorship?

It's not new. The whole point of a downvoting facility is to encourage site users to conform their posts to what other users want to read. It isn't 100% effective, since users may decide that they'd rather post what they want, downvotes be damned. It probably isn't meant to be 100% effective. Users who do this all the time will get banned, but more occasional anti-censorship posters will broaden the scope of acceptable discourse, often in beneficial directions.

I immediately stop reading the comment and downvote whenever I see that phrase.

It's againt HN guidelines, but most people here don't care.

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