You are getting downvoted for this and deserve it. I want to say that this is NOT censorship for the following reasons:

1) Downvoting is not censorship, even if the reasons are arbitrary and capricious.

2) Disagreeing with you is not censorship.

3) I find it difficult to believe that HN is downvoting you because they are imperialists who are trying to suppress an ideological challenge. They are probably downvoting you because your arguments are badly written and badly thought-out.

For instance, I am also anti-imperialist and I downvoted your comment. It's not because your bold anti-war stance is threatening my politics. It's because your comment doesn't add anything useful to the discussion and is indistinguishable from outright trolling.

It would be a shame if the Galileo or the Susan B. Anthony of today were silenced due to downvotes

.. or placed into indefinite detention in a prison widely regarded as one of the most heinous locations of brainwashing and torture in the western world, for the mere fact of having exposed massive war crimes and other crimes against humanity ..

Then explain Q theory? My theory is it’s bitcoin whale trolls doing it for money, crypto, power, influence, and last but certainly not least, for the lulz.

I agree with you. I see you around HN. DM me sometime if you want to talk. Not about Q I hope; I am tired enough of politics as it is and can’t wait for the election to just happen and be over. I only mention it because I believe there’s a link between the downvoting parties and Q, though I can’t prove it in any specific instance.

Will look for citation on research I read the other day showing that #alllivesmatter is almost entirely a reactionary movement in response to #blacklivesmatter original content, lending credence to the theory that it is a small group of people operating a lot of bots to down out #blacklivesmatter, which was supported with data and code from the Twitter API. If someone has this link drop it below.

>Q

I have zero interest in Q other than that it is yet another collective entity which is self-serving opinions to an in-group, who as individuals, collectively form a consensus - whether its 'correct' or not - and strive to either grow that group or attack anyone who would act to counter its narrative. This is an intrinsic feature of human discourse, whether its with the "everyone knows those guys are crazy" group, or "everyone knows what everyone knows" group ..

The point is, collective agreement is not truth. Its just what the masses think is true - and this is highly specious, anyway. For example, it was once collectively 'true' that disease was spread by miasma, and anyone who suggested hand-washing was degraded into oblivion. This factor happens intrinsically in all human relations - and online social media is not immune to it, but rather acts as a force magnifier for collectively-derived reality.

What is todays "hand washing decreases mortality rate" issue, is tomorrows "this is an amazing discovery we should have paid more attention to at the time, but didn't, because 'everyone knew' it was 'wrong'" ..

I can’t tell if you’re comparing Q to hand washing advocates, or to those anti-handwashing naysayers?

It is simply too soon to tell. ;)

You’re an affable rogue, after my own heart lol

Thanks. After all the flagging and downvotes, that actually makes me smile.

That isn't censorship it is more speech. Your message going so light grey that you need to highlight it means "and most people disagree with it" is appended to the discussion with more relevant information.

Would having a thumbs down emoji/emoteicon with a large counter vastly overwhelming the tbumbs up one be something anyone could argue with any credibility as censorship?

Oh, the downvotes are one thing - and I fully concur that many times, individuals espouse points of view that do not gel with the mainstream narrative - and that is what the downvotes indicate - not necessarily whether someone is 'true' or not, but whether their position is agreed upon by the mainstream masses.

But that's not what happens. Get downvoted too much, and you will get the dang hammer brought down on you, and its back to a rate limited life of communication for you.

This is the danger of the collective reality. It isn't always the truth - but rather, what everyone thinks the truth is, and we can see time and again just how wrong collectivity can be through history.

> Get downvoted too much, and you will get the dang hammer brought down on you, and its back to a rate limited life of communication for you.

I like to think that dang gives us all just a sharp enough edge to his moderation for us to cut ourselves on, but I take your point. I found myself in a flame war, got rate limited by a mod, actually emailed Daniel, got a soft agreement to lift limits in a week or so with good behavior. In his and HN’s defense, I was a bit edgy and I agree it was not an isolated comment but closer to 15 across a couple threads with the same person. I thought I was having a spirited debate at the time and still do, while recognizing that protracted flamewars burn down the users’ and mods’ and admins’ morale and it is a kind of social contagion that self-reinforces negative reactionary behavior among and between users. So that’s to say I agree that I did something unsuitable for HN.

What happened next was nothing.

For almost a month, I was rate-limited. I just thought I was still letting Daniel down. I had no transparency into my mod action. No mod mail like on reddit. I ended up emailing about something else entirely, and casually mentioned it. Daniel almost didn’t really know what to think. He didn’t do the original action; a mod did. I did email him, but that was like 5 in a thread out of how many he must have to read a day? I sent him our original thread, he read it, and I wasn’t rate-limited anymore. He genuinely forgot.

Daniel is too busy to care about anyone’s agenda but keeping the site what it’s meant to be, and trying to build it slowly into what it will become. He’s a good dude. Let’s not make this personal. I only email with him, but I know this much: HN is lucky to have him.

Some more transparency into mod and flag actions wouldn’t go astray, either.