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Comment by mvdtnz | Hacker News Reader

The layoffs are happening all over, not just in USA. Atlassian has cut jobs. Spotify. Wisetech. Xero. It's happening all over. This is not a USA tax policy problem.

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What could possibly trigger people to down vote this absolutely neutral, and 100% factual, normal post? Cant the moderators not explain, than down voting is not for things you don't agree with?

While factually correct, the US tax change was a huge driver of global layoffs. And the original comment didn’t just mention US tax policy as a source of layoffs, and the alternative source provided would apply globally.

The tax change impacted US company spend on their overseas businesses, so of course they’d be impacted, and it would indirectly impact overseas supplies of domestic business. Beyond that, it sets a tone and many in business are quick to follow the behaviors of others.

Uh, downvoting is definitely a useful tool to signal that you don’t agree with an opinion or subjective statement.

But yes, downvoting a factual statement makes no sense.

That's just silly. The fact that you disagree with an opinion does not mean that other people should not get the chance to be exposed to it. That's how echo-chambers form.

At the same time, the amount of disagreement an opinion gathers is an extremely important channel of information for determining whether you agree with someone's position. Silencing the disagreement with it gives an outsized benefit to harmful and malicious statements.

That's fine when a disagreement (or downvote) is just a signal on the post, but when it's used as a way to silence an opinion (e.g downvotes will hide it) that's even more harmful and malicious. Especially when the guideline is to downvote posts that are low-quality or don't conform to the rules, not posts you just merely disagree with or are against your belief system. Popularity should not be confused with truth.

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