Re:The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is bein...
by jshevek on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @02:11PM
(#23009971)
Your last point is less impactful recently, as opposed to years ago. Years ago one needed to making numerous substantive contributions to earn downvoting power. Recently, a critical mass of users has been rewarding participants in reddit style humor threads and snarky comments, allowing new users to accumulate upvotes without substance, and without experiencing the more measured culture of traditional HN.
Upvotes should be for 'contributes to discussion' not for 'I agree'. But it's universally used an agreement/disagreement button on Reddit which amplifies the hivemind massively.
That plus the fact that downvoting is only granted once you've spent a considerable amount of time participating in the community can have a huge impact on the nature of discussions.