Ask HN: Is the downvoting feature valuable?
I&#x27;ve been a casual browser of HN for a few months now, and while I tend to find value in some of the stories (I particularly like browsing Show HNs), I find the community rather toxic. I&#x27;ve sworn off commenting here a couple of times, because of the behavior here, and then returned to it because I felt I could contribute a thought or two of value.<p>If your view is unpopular, even if well-stated, it will be downvoted into oblivion. Often, a post of mine will actually get 3-4 upvotes, before a certain crowd roves through hours later and sends it to -4.<p>One of the &quot;50 Lies Programmers Believe&quot;[1], featured on HN a bit ago, is that &quot;The tech industry is a meritocracy.&quot;<p>It&#x27;s not, but unfortunately, HN&#x27;s downvote feature is extremely restrictive, only users with a high karma score get access to it, meaning it tends to be a way for popular users with popular views to suppress uncommon views. I suppose if this was only used to mitigate spam, marketing, foul behavior, and more, this would be okay, but it&#x27;s often used to simply express disagreement.<p>Social networks like Facebook and Google+ have long understood that &quot;Dislike&quot; or &quot;-1&quot; buttons lead to an unpleasant experience, which is why most social networks tend to go without them.[2][3]<p>Hacker News, in fact, recently announced a ban on &quot;gratuitous negativity&quot;[4], yet the downvote is heavily used on a regular basis.<p>While I won&#x27;t be surprised to see this downvoted or flagged, or labelled gratuitously negative in itself, I ask you to consider the value of the downvote button, and whether it deserves to exist. Or even, perhaps, if you should show more hesitation before the next time you push it.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tommorris.org&#x2F;posts&#x2F;9317
[2] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;Why-is-there-no-Dislike-button-on-Facebook
[3] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thenextweb.com&#x2F;socialmedia&#x2F;2010&#x2F;10&#x2F;10&#x2F;facebook-dislike-button-why-it-will-never-happen&#x2F;
[4] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9317916