Downvotes are not a productive means of communication. If you have problems with my views be an adult and oppose my views rationally. Otherwise ignore me and move on. Having any form of social credit score that can be abused to silence others is quite literally a pillar of authoritarianism and de-incentivizes the free flow of ideas if they disagree with established groupthink. It doesn’t matter if the majority believes it to be true. At one time the majority believed the Earth to be flat.

Thankfully HN doesn’t fall into this hole as deeply as Reddit, due in part to the steeper requirements to participate in downvoting and simply how varied the opinions are here. Not to mention HN doesn’t have a cabal of “powermods” forcing subreddits to follow their own agenda.