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Comment by ecb_penguin | Hacker News Reader

> 4 seconds after I posted it, it got downvoted. Then 10 seconds later, -2. Because it has the word cryptocurrency. No one can load, read and react that fast. This is getting ridiculous. Turn off the bots based on a word, and engage with the substance.

Because as soon as you said Cryptocurrency, you lost the plot.

Everything you said is literally how freelancing already works. You pay a certain amount upfront, and then pay more based on deliverables.

> Cryptocurrency is the right fit here because you want it to be tied to something the client can’t just mint unlimited amounts of

Can you tell me how to mint unlimited amounts of US Dollars? I would love this hack.

> just another use of cryptocurrency that properly aligns everyone’s incentives and prevents legal disputes through continuity instead of abruptness

How does a blockchain determine whether I built the site the owner wanted?

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I normally think pg has been very reasonable in his views, but his historic approval of downvoting things merely to signal disagreement, or worse, being triggered by a word, is a mistake, this norm makes HN much less useful.

It chills speech to the point of not being able to suggest correct solutions to things, or correctly diagnose problems. Well, I refuse to participate in that.

I only downvote if I think the quality of a comment is bad, it is completely off-topic or absurd for example, or in bad faith. Not if I disagree with it and certainly not because it contains — gasp - a word for a technology I would prefer not to see discussed!

And I also refuse to be bullied into silence by some downvotes. I am saying that downvotes within 4 seconds is not likely to be organic, because it requires someone to have refreshed the page at nearly the exact time I posted, magically scroll down to the exact comment, read it first and downvote it. And then 4 downvotes in quick succession after. There is more going on here, I suspect, than mere “losing the plot”.

I could attempt to test this by posting comments with the ahem blacklisted word as a reply to some comments even further down the page, where it would be absurd for someone to scroll to that exact comment within, say, 10 seconds. But I have noticed that a specific set of words seems to produce that effect on HN.

> Not if I disagree with it and certainly not because it contains — gasp - a word for a technology I would prefer not to see discussed!

I'll stop you right there. You were downvoted because you were wrong, not because, - gasp - you used a certain word.

I'm a cryptographer. I'm not afraid of cryptocurrencies. I'm afraid of snake oil salesmen that sell things they don't understand.

> And I also refuse to be bullied into silence by some downvotes

K, well, I have no idea what this means. It's not bullying to downvote a wrong opinion.

I've been wrong lots of times. It's not a big deal...

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