I have never written a line of Go, and have only a casual acquaintance with Haskell. I'm not a Microsoft fan but spend approximately zero HN time bashing them. I would not attempt to write any sort of crypto anything in Javascript. I am not a libertarian. I am slightly interested in crypto-currency but have never owned any. I think Hayek is way overrated.
My karma score is approaching 8000, and I promise it's enough to downvote other people.
I dare say there is some groupthink on HN. There is groupthink everywhere where like-minded people congregate. But I've seen a very wide range of ideas treated with respect here, and pretty much the same very wide range of ideas treated with contempt, depending on who happens to be reading and responding.
> If you are a new user and you actually want to communicate with people...and hold a minority opinion...you will be downvoted out of visibility.
I was a new user. I hold many minority opinions (including ones diametrically opposed to those you have named as critical points of HN consensus, particularly on the issue of political ideology), and have expressed them from very early in my time on HN. I haven't been downvoted out of visibility.
I suspect that you are both misattributing the cause of the karma hit your earlier account took and falsely generalizing from that misattribution.
I wasn't looking for congratulations, I was pointing out that your claim is factually incorrect. I hold plenty of the opinions you say are minority opinions. So far as I know, I was neither much more nor much less typical of the HN population when I was new here than I am now. But I did OK and continue to do so.
It's perfectly obvious that holding a minority opinion can't guarantee getting downvoted into oblivion, for the boring reason that you can hold that opinion without expressing it, and in that case no one can possibly downvote you for it.
Of course you might (very reasonably) not want to censor yourself to that extent. Very well: all you need do is have some other things you can talk interesting about besides your shortlist of pet dislikes. Then the upvotes you get from being interesting on other topics will outweigh the downvotes you allegedly get from daring not to be a libertarian. Although, I repeat: I'm not a libertarian, I've dared to express not-libertarian views more than once, and I don't recall ever getting wiped out by downvotes as a result. I've seen plenty of other not-libertarian comments that aren't invisibly light grey. So you might consider the possibility that what you got hammered for was not the mere fact of expressing an unpopular opinion, but something about how you expressed it.
Now, even the approach outlined in the previous paragraph might not be enough, if what you say about your pet dislikes gets you not merely downvoted but hellbanned. (That's the thing where your comments are invisible except to you, the moderators, and people with the "showdead" feature turned on, so you never get any karma or any replies ever again.)
But -- barring cockups and miscarriages of justice, both of which inevitably happen but are pretty rare -- that will only happen if what you say is not merely unpopular but particularly stupid, or repeatedly boring, or something else of the sort to attract the attention of a moderator and make them think "This person is not adding anything positive to HN by being there". So don't do that. Be civil. Be interesting. Don't try to turn HN into a political flamewar. It's not really that difficult.
I often disagree with other posters here on HN - sometimes just to play devil's advocate and stimulate conversation around a certain point or points.
I've been down-voted just a few times for expressing my opinion when I present a well-reasoned, logical argument. (Unfortunately I've been down-voted many times trying to be funny or posting a comment that's taken in an offensive way). I think you'll find that having a debate or even just a conversation with more than one side being taken is often the best way to see the whole subject.
I am none of the things you mentioned (well, I'm not really a Microsoft booster) and I got downvote privileges within 3 months of opening my account. I'm not sure what it is you've been doing to draw ire, but it's far from universal.
My karma score is approaching 8000, and I promise it's enough to downvote other people.
I dare say there is some groupthink on HN. There is groupthink everywhere where like-minded people congregate. But I've seen a very wide range of ideas treated with respect here, and pretty much the same very wide range of ideas treated with contempt, depending on who happens to be reading and responding.