Flamebait like this will get you banned on HN. We don't care what you're flaming for or against; we care about HN threads not being set on fire, or sent into deeper circles of hell.
It's hilarious that in a thread full of people hating on companies for deplatforming people for their opinions, you are getting massively downvoted for voicing your own opinion.
Goes to show that no one really wants "free speech".
I think you’re confused as to what upvoting and downvoting are for. The voting system is design to lift up comments that provide value to the discussion, and hide comments that don’t. Someone being downvoted doesn’t mean everyone is disagreeing with them, or punishing them for their opinion, rather just recognizing that it doesn’t bring any value to the topic of conversation.
> Someone being downvoted doesn’t mean everyone is disagreeing with them, or punishing them for their opinion
Regardless of what the rules are, in practice this is exactly how upvoting/downvoting works on sites like Reddit and this one. You can't override basic human nature with loose guidelines.
Voting is primarily a way to express that you agree/disagree without adding a redundant comment. Maybe you're thinking of other sites that are indeed intended to be used that way.
> Maybe you're thinking of other sites that are indeed intended to be used that way.
Do you have an example? It also seems probable that HN intended voting to be used that way as well. The intended use case isn't always what users use something for.
People who don't want free speech are usually the ones complaining about how other people exercise their free speech in ways that counter their own message.
Like voting on comments, for example. That's free speech too.
That said, HN is definitely not anything even remotely resembling a free speech platform, in concept or execution. It's the recruitment platform for Y Combinator, and all decisions are made here to optimize for that.
That's not what HN is optimized for. I can tell you that for sure because it's my job to (attempt to) optimize it and I've posted about this many times over many years:
It's terrible marketing not to admit to one's actual purpose. People can feel that. Also, it would be soul destroying to work at a job that required it. It's much better when your real purpose is aligned with what you say it is, and also with what you actually do. I find that's possible with HN, and it's one thing I like about the job.
It's totally ok if you don't believe me, but if you want to take the time to read the past explanations at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so..., I'd be super curious to hear what you think is wrong with them. For me the interesting thing about HN is that keeping the community happy—by gratifying curiosity—is the thing that produces value for YC.
Having read through, I think mostly the only clarification I'd offer is that I don't think it's bad or wrong for HN to provide value to YC by way of interest.
I was meaning to say almost exactly, "the way to maximize HN's value to YC is to maximize how interesting it is to the community"... so that when YC (and its companies) need interesting people to solve interesting problems, they're already here. It seems like you agree with that, though you do call it "cynical" and "hard-nosed business" reasoning.
"Marketing" is sometimes treated like a 4 letter word but that's not how I meant it.
"Interesting" however, seems like a very important word (it's mentioned 24 times in those 15 comments)!
> Goes to show that no one really wants "free speech".
Especially not on HN, where the SV/SJW group think prevail.
Argument I often get is "you are free to voice your opinions and we are free to massively downvote you", well, same happened with 9/11, the US elites have been cunts to the whole world (including to "The People" and still are), they are totally free to be, by then 9/11 came as a big slap in Wall Street America face, maybe they deserved it...
We've asked you many times to stop using HN for ideological battle. Since you've ignored those requests and done even more of it, I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
As for "SJW group think", that sort of generalization is entirely determined by your own priors. The opposite side has different priors and sees HN in exactly the opposite way. Both views are not only imaginary, they're actually the same phenomenon with just one bit flipped.
It's a minority (on both sides of the political spectrum) that doesn't want free speech, but they're very vocal about it. It's fascism, regardless of who is doing it.
As long as the country and constitution remain in the "defend to the death your right to say it", we'll be fine.
Diversity of ideas and opinions should be celebrated.
As much as I hate the man, I do.