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Who knows - it’s just fake internet points. Hard to get worked up about.

Kinda easy to guess, there’s really only one possibility and answer: people felt a certain way after reading and voted accordingly. The idea that anyone votes based on the content of what’s been said is false. For example, you’re not gonna upvote a true statement of a statistical fact if you think there’s a terrible reason for it. You’re gonna downvote because you feel bad about what you perceive as the reason regardless

Because “successfully siphoned off by bureaucrats” has an implicit value judgement in it. If someone a) thinks the cost of regulation provides value and b) believes that downvoting is a reasonable response to opinions they disagree with, they’re likely to downvote in this case.

Personally I only believe one of those things. I also believe the point about additional cost of development could have been made without the value judgement.

Downvotes help people skip the noise and focus on the signal. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.