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Comment by JackCh | Hacker News Reader

In and of themselves, no. However, I think an argument could be made for the visual suppression of posts, which occurs after too many downvotes have been given, being a form of soft censorship. The information is still broadcast but it's made impossible to read unless I copy/paste it or tilt my screen to an extreme angle.

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Or you can just click on the comment timestamp. If downvotes are 'censorship', so are upvotes.

Upvotes do not suppress the readability of comments. That workarounds exist is beyond the point.

Sure they do. They move other comments off the page entirely.

Maybe it's indicative of which sort of conversations I choose to participate in, but I rarely see comment sections go beyond the page fold.

Supposing we take your argument seriously though, comments past the page fold which also have their contrast lowered to the point of illegibility are certainly censored even moreso.

It only takes a dozen short comments or so even on a giant screen. And yes, almost everything is censorship if you redefine censorship to mean any random irksome thing.

Incidentally, I do think the way the comment fading works is pointedly user-hating and dumb (it's traditionally dumb, though!), but it's not really censorship. More generally, since we're talking about taking things seriously, framing forum irritants as some sort of oppression is a solid way to ensure few people take you seriously.

I don't think that describing a system which deliberately suppresses the legibility of posts you've already scrolled to see as 'soft censorship' is an unreasonable "redefinition" of censorship. If you disagree, I suppose I consider you unreasonable.

Very well. I have added 'soft unreasonable' to my profile.

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