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Comment by ivewonyoung | Hacker News Reader

> I wouldn't mind that so much, except they're minimally-active in the comment section and instead use flagging. At least defend your beliefs.

From what I see, even good comments with facts and sources that go against the prevalent narrative are either downvoted or flagged a good chunk of the time, which discourages people from commenting(as it's meant to be) because of lack of visibility. It can also make the commenters unable to post comments for hours because HN's rate limiter kicks in, so they are effectively silenced.

Also, many times they're attacked personally and those comments violating HN's etiquette are not downvoted or flagged. Not to mention very low quality Redditesque are also not downvoted or flagged, but are upvoted, which lowers the quality of HN as a whole.

View on HN

"People don't like my opinions therefore I am going to sabotage the discussion from obscurity."

A good chunk of the time, it's sourced and documented facts that are flagged and downvoted, to reduce visibility.

Are you sure? There can be absolutely be voting and flagging biases, but the majority if the time it happens it is due to issues of tone for comments that are picking fights rather then prompting interesting discourse. When you get flagged or down voted, the most productive response is to look at how you were presenting your information or opinion and if there was a way to do so that would be more inclined to produce a productive conversation. Even when it's borderline, there's usually something you could have changed that wouldn't have drawn as much partisan ire and it is valuable to consider this, as partisan ire turns off brains.

I'll give you one example that I saw just now of someone else's comment that was downvoted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43710265

It happens all the time.

Here's an example of my comment on the same topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43256114

The tone policing one has to do has to be done only by one side, the other "side" can write very low quality comments with personal attacks and not get downvoted or flagged as frequently. It's same on Reddit too. Absolute misinformation and FUD gets voted up if they favor the prevalent side and countering comments are downvoted creating a chilling effect to reduce visibility and discourage participation of folks that don't agree 100% with the political narrative.

That is exactly how Reddit became more and more extreme leading to popular subs becoming full of death threats at one point. And HN is on it's way there.

^ Honestly, the most useful approach.

I can't change other people, but I can change myself.

Sometimes, it is what it is. But often I can find a way to more effectively say what I was trying.

Exhibit A: avoiding the dangling ad hom after an otherwise solid point. Seductive but unproductive.

I just gave a couple of examples in the other comment in this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43710568

Zero ad hominem or anything else.

And I see this all the time. Not to mention only one "side" is subject to this suppression so it's no surprise that they prefer to(or are forced by the site mechanics to) disengage from commenting.

If sourced verifiable facts stated in a neutral way are punished, what chance do opinions or personal takes have? It's a textbook example of an echo chamber.

The comments with sources doesn't appear to be downvoted. Your comment has no sources and the tone feels a little combative so I'm not surprised it picked up a couple of downvotes given the topic. In general, many of your comments have a slight bitter, combative air to them that probably hampers your communication effectiveness.

Anything Musk related on here has always been prone to less constructive conversation, even before he became a part of the partisan political circus.

>The comments with sources doesn't appear to be downvoted

It was downvoted for a while.

> In general, many of your comments have a slight bitter, combative air to them that probably hampers your communication effectiveness

Comments that are much more bitter and combative than mine and without sources are upvoted all the time, because they fuel a certain political narrative.

I stand corrected. Please flag anything you disagree with.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com