You need a certain amount of karma to downvote. I think it's 500, but I'm not sure because I don't have that much yet. :)

Edit: it's confirmed at 501: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12074198

Just 5400 more days and I'll be able to downvote! What a time to be alive!

I just upvoted you there because I'm nice like that.

Thanks! Only three more votes before I get superpowers. :)

I upvoted you. With great power comes yadda yadda yadda.

Edited to add: PSYCH!! Now it's going to take 4 upvotes to get super powers. BWAHAHAHA!!

Edited to add #2: Just kidding! You're 2 upvotes away again!

P.S. Dear friends, I'm sorry. I won't abuse my vast and terrible ability to grant or deny imaginary Internet points ever again. -xf

With imaginary power comes imaginary responsibility, and don't you forget it!

That's not how karma trains work!!

Just upvoted you twice and it seems you're now past the 501 mark! Welcome to voting land :P

Upvoted to join the upvote train.

And down vote arrows do not appear on aging posts.

I was confused as to why I have a downvote button now, I just realized I barely passed 500 few days ago, woo.

You need to have a certain amount of karma before you can downvote comments. I'm not sure what the threshold is these days.

You get it after 500

There is a karma limit (of ~500) to get downvote privileges.

you need to have a certain amount of karma (number next to your account) for the downvote function to be available.

A few weeks ago I recently obtained the downvote ability at 500 karma.

I suspect you mean 501. I reached 500 a few weeks ago, and left it there for a while... it was such a nice, round number.

Can I suggest 512 for an even nicer round number.

Sorry upvoted you, onwards to the next round number.

^ This is correct. I was equally confused when mine hit 500 and downvote wasn't there.

Presumably somewhere in the HN code you would find `karma > KARMA_THRESHOLD_DOWNVOTE`.

More likely (> karma downvote-threshold) since news.arc is written in, well, arc.

Good guess: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7606467.

Sure. I should have disclaimed my pseudo-code I guess. Point was just that I expect there's a > and a 500, as opposed to a 501.

What did you do to get to 500? I am still at 84 and feels like it will be forever.

You need a certain Troll Level.

No, you generally don't get to downvote in HN until your karma is above some threshold that changes occasionally.