> Sure. If you don't like your opinions being hidden, you just have to go build your own community of millions of people. Simple.
No less simple than someone building it for you while you reject the idea that they might have conditions on sharing it with you.
> I don't mind being downvoted. I don't care about karma points. But the HN system is one where downvoted comments are hidden, which is itself a form of censorship.
Moderating a private property isn’t censorship. It’s not. If HN or FB or whatever controlled your access to basic internet protocols sure. That would be dystopian and would be an example of censorship. You’re just failing to meet social expectations in a community you’re willingly participating in, and experiencing the consequences of that. It’s no more censorship than not being invited to someone’s birthday party.
> It is deeply ironic, for example, that my parent comment about censorship is now hidden at the bottom of the page, in light gray, because one person downvoted it.
That... isn’t how the algorithm works, and I’ve been downvoted enough to know it. You’ve likely gotten a lot of upvotes and downvotes leaving an average of -1 (which is -2 btw, you start at +1), but the volume of downvotes is much greater than average. I don’t know the precise formula but I know with certainty that one downvote doesn’t get me greyed.