Meta comment: wonder if my comment will get downvoted too when it's just asking a question meant to start an intelligent discussion.
It's all too easy to declare votes are for whatever reason you want to think they are.
This ensures that HN provides a semi-curated discussion weighted towards technical and scientific issues, and against geopolitical or socioeconomic topics, for example.
That isn't a statement that these topics shouldn't be discussed, just that they aren't necessarily appropriate for discussion here.
You mean, the forum software itself? Who wrote the algorithm?