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Comment by andrepd | Hacker News Reader

>On HN, if you are from China, India, Russia, African country, the best thing you can do is to avoid articles about those geographical locations because comments will be mostly negative and any dissenting view will be downvoted until it becomes unreadable.

I agree that downvoting for disagreement is bad, but have you considered you might simply be wrong? I strain to believe that anybody attacked you simply for being from Russia/China/Africa/whatever. They are attacking the regimes of those countries, not their population. These are two distinct things, and it's ridiculous to think that disliking a dictatorial government somehow means hostility towards the people themselves.

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Uh-oh sorry the distinction is so not obvious in many thread. Consider some meme of the following: “We shouldn’t do any business with China and we should even sanction them. Do not buy anything Chinese made. Oh btw Chinese people it’s not against you guys just your government. I’m sorry if you don’t get any benefit or lose your income source”

In what universe does those views not mean hostility towards the people themselves. If you say that to any Native Chinese they’ll tell you it’s bullshit.

> but have you considered you might simply be wrong?

You don't have to be wrong to be downvoted, most of HN just has to feel you're wrong, and boy oh boy - can the HN group-think be wrong (even on facts)

Nonetheless, when defending the CCP, one is often wrong. CCP literally has rape-and-torture camps where people die suspiciously and graciously donate their organs.

With regard to african countries, it kinda matters which ones you're talking about: there's a world of difference between the DRC and Ghana.

Please don't take the thread further into nationalistic flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My comment is on andrepd's meta topic of: “I don't like that HNers tend to focus on negative or critical things about China, Russia, or Africa when these topics arise.”.

My comment is "new" in that, in this thread, what I've said was not yet said in response to this specific complaint. My comment is related to the thread, and not generic (it mentions the characters introduced by the parent thread [China, Africa, criticism thereof] by name). My basic point is that it's not surprising that HNers recall an apparent genocide in progress when talking about its location.

I have read those guidelines front to back at least ten times, Dan. I still can't predict how to predict what passes and what doesn't.

When people hurl personal abuse at me; they emerge unscathed.

When I criticize a political party's policy of genocidal prison camps, without criticizing any nation/people; it's deemed to contribute to "nationalistic flamewar". I take special care not to make a value judgement about any nations, and it's deemed to contribute to "nationalistic flamewar".

Strictly speaking, given that most things that people do occur inside, or relating to, nations: what criticism or affirmation of anything doesn't contribute to "nationalistic flamewar"?

I'm sorry I wasn't able to respond to this in depth. I hear the questions. There just isn't always time to give an in-depth response everywhere. You're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com, as long as you don't mind unpredictable response latencies.

I feel a downvote must only be used for a comment that has vulgar, strong language or anything that isn’t in the good spirit of a good debate. Downvotes must be used only to flag comments violating guidelines, not as a way to silence those who share differing views. If you disagree, write a comment. I realised most people use downvotes powers to silence those who disagree with them.

There's a flag button to flag comments violating guidelines, which actually silences people (unless you have showdead on). That downvotes exist as a separate, more easily accessible feature is a strong suggestion that they're intended to be used for more than just rule-violations.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 for the official story.

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