zlacker

Yes targeted downvoting for not following groupthink happens. Just like everywhere else on the internet that lets anonymous users vote.

But no, having your tally of meaningless internet points decrease isn’t really getting “cancelled”. If downvotes here make you sad, stop looking at them or go do something fun instead. You aren’t going to be uninvited to speak at conferences or lose you job because your HN score goes down.

>>bigiai+(OP)
>having your tally of meaningless internet points decrease

When you're flagged dead, you effectively disappear. This is wrong in my opinion.

>>bigiai+(OP)
Even when you have evidence and links to support your own argument and it goes against the group-think, they still would rather downvote that to refute the argument.

>>bigiai+(OP)
I don’t care about this score whatsoever but what can sometimes happen is that you post something controversial which get downvoted to -4 and then other, completely unrelated comments start getting downvotes as well. It seems as if people are looking through your profile for your comments and go and downvote some more. It comes across a bit weird.

>>tinus_+g5
> It seems as if people are looking through your profile for your comments and go and downvote some more. It comes across a bit weird.

People will do that. It's happened to me a couple of times. Nothing you can do about it, though, and you're not allowed to complain about it. Just take your lumps in silence.

>>ratsma+x
Yeah, that sucks, but getting flagged enough to be shadowbanned seems to take a fair bit more work/arguing than a few retaliatory downvotes. Surely anybody getting close to that knows they’re doing so?

And you can always come back as bigiain2 or ratsmack2 later...

Assuming that HN/YCombinator “owes” you any points reputation is a pretty silly point of view.

I guess there probably are some cases where YC (or other) backed startups might judge people based on HN meaningless internet points, but if you care about that, perhaps your choices to argue vehemently enough against the groupthink here are nit great choices for you? You probably aren’t waging a vegan or anti surveillance capitalism war of words on your LinkedIn in that case, you might want to keep personal crusades out of your professional persona here if you are playing a profession persona here?

Or own the personal crusades, because if Facebook or Google refuse to hire me based on my privacy stance in my HN post history, or Palantir refuse to hire me based on my distrust of law enforcement? I’m totally OK with that. I will back out of arguments with Googlers or Facebookers well before things get to punitive downvoting stage though, just for my own sanity...

>>krapp+M6
I think the reasons for not being allowed to complain are pretty fair though, it’s not going to make any positive difference (and you’ll more likely end up Streisand Effecting yourself), and it’s uninteresting for everybody else.

I see it as not so much “take your lumps”, but more like “Meh, haters gonna hate - just ignore them.” Not a perfect solution, sure, but if you wanna participate on a anonymous/pseudonymous forum, that’s kinda inevitable. What’s the alternative?

>>bigiai+lm
Reddit has a system where if people do that, for them it looks like downvotes but for the rest it doesn’t count.