HN unfortunately has started downvoting to show disagreement.

It’s happened in lockstep with the political radicalization and censorship across the internet, eg Twitter and YouTube.

Contrary to fluffy language, HN is a censorious community that uses downvotes and shadowbans to shape narratives.

Edit:

For overly literal readers — note, I’m commenting on rates not saying it never happened historically.

It went from being rare and limited to contentious topics to routinely finding quality replies buried for wronngthink.