I have since lost faith.
HN likes to masquerade as some sort of upscale establishment, high and above the petty squabbles of Eslewhere, but in the end this place too devolves into a predictable echo chamber just like the rest of them, when it comes to any topic on which people have varied opinions.
This is not a place for dissenting views (such as this comment). This community does not brook any disagreement, because this service is not designed for it.
This did not happen overnight; for more than a year I have been watching perfectly fine comments getting buried in the gray for not siding with the prevailing mob on divisive topics. Even neutral, soft-spoken stances get struck down.
One can now reliably predict what the majority of comments are going to be like, just by reading the title of a post.
I've brought this up several times with dang, but apparently you're not able to appreciate these problems until you try participating as a regular user.
And let's not even mention the awful UI design with its vendetta against eyes, low light and small screens.
HN is broken, and one of the major indicators of a broken service is a tone-deaf management who continues to insist that everything is Working As Intended.
There's a pandemic on. Voting has been a bit wonky this year, probably because of the pandemic. People are cranky and scared and yadda.
But normally HN is much more tolerant of dissent than most online spaces, assuming it's done right. Rants that call other members names or that implicitly or explicitly suggest "This will be downvoted because you are all bad people" or similar is not how to do that.
That kind of polarization does not just happen for no reason; people reach that frustration after repeatedly seeing themselves and others being downvoted anyway, no matter how flowery and sugared their dissent is.
Downvoters don't care how polite someone is, if they're saying something they don't want to be seen. It's a zero cost action for them, and easily lets them control what opinions other readers see about a topic.
Example: In every thread about browsers, if most people say they dislike Edge, anyone simply saying "Hey I like Edge, it's not so bad" gets downvoted.
So after a while that Edge user will be preemptively defensive the next time they voice their opinion, if they even feel like participating anymore.
HN is a place I spend a lot of time because the culture here is reasonable.
To me, saying "Hey I like Edge, it's not so bad" is pointless shit-stirring. It's looking to start trouble for no real reason.
It's a low value comment. The guidelines actively discourage that, so it's not surprising that it would be downvoted, having nothing to do with "disagreeing" per se.
If you have something meaty and thoughtful to say that disagrees with the majority view, the HN crowd will give you a fair shake. Jumping into the midst of a discussion where everyone is saying "This is junk!" to say "Well, I like it!" isn't thoughtful or meaty.