> @moderators: have I earned the automatic downvote? Whatever I post shows zero points as soon as it is posted.
Not a mod, but I'll take an educated guess that this is what ires someone:
> What is called far right in USA is the same thing we call neo-fascism anywhere else
The rest of your post is spot on IMO but I hesitate to upvote because of that part, and not because there isn't a point but because it is a whole lot more nuanced:
Yes: a number of wackos exist on the "far right" (I hate that term as it frames conservatives with totalitarian ones.)
But there has also been a tendency by media to abuse the term as a rubber stamp for "anything conservative we don't like". It's either that or a large number of facists are the ones to defend the jews this year, and despite 2020 being odd I don't think that will ever happen.
(I collected a fair number of downvotes myself last election season, seemingly from both sides, which is why I feel somewhat qualified to explain ;-)
To be honest I don't care if someone is ired or not, being ired is a choice and usually doesn't depend to what other people do, but how we react to them
It is my understanding that over the years people have developed various software to follow threads and users' comment streams so it is conceivable that some bored zealot took it upon himself to police every single thing you post in real time. Or set up a downvote bot as others suggested. There are some genuine weirdos here.
I haven't been here for a few years (green account again, yay), but at least back then, moderators weren't know for f...ng with anyone like that. Warning, maybe another warning, shadow ban and good bye.
At any rate, posting "@moderators" in the middle of a 4000 comment thread will get you nowhere. There is a contact email at the bottom if you want to ask for investigation.
I've never heard or seen anything like what you suggest.
It has been admitted I think that one is aware of certain bots (not affiliated with YC) that vote in certain directions.
I think I have even seen one popular HNer admit that he thought there was a bot who would upvote all his answer irregardless of who low quality they were.
Maybe someone has something like that and have pointed it at you.
More likely though you annoyed someone and they went in to your profile and looked at your other answers.
Edit: I looked into your comments and here are two notes.
1. Your comments are a mixed bag. Saying Trump brought war to American soil for example isn't anywhere near true and also inflammatory.
2. Some of them are insightful but ires one side without delighting the other. The result is you get a downvote from those who are annoyed and no support from the other side.
> What is called far right in USA is the same thing we call neo-fascism anywhere else
The US far-right includes camps that don't exactly fit that definition (though there is plenty of overlap), like christian dominionists, corporatist right-libertarians, and the misogynistic PUA/incell/MRA crowd (which is more of a feeder system than a political philosophy per se).
That used to be the case, but it has changed. The last 10 years the extreme left in the US has shifted left, passing even the European left, at least according to Pew[1]. I don't think this particular report mentions the European part, can't find that right now, but they mentioned it in another report on it.
I would like to add that the Critical Race Theory (where DEI originates from) is only recently starting to get traction in for example The Netherlands, traditionally an already pretty left-leaning country.
> The last 10 years the extreme left in the US has shifted left, passing even the European left
Whether or not it's true, the “extreme left” in the US that may or may not have shifted that way is politically irrelevant.
Meanwhile, of the major parties the Democratic Party has been stable for decades while the Republican Party has shot to the extremes, a process that has continued at a rapid pace over the last decade.
What page in [1] do you refer to? While I believe it could be democrats are more left than european sozialdemocratic parties, I would doubt they are left to succesor party of the communidt aera.
But that doesn't mean that the Democratic party message comes from the far left.
Biden can't pronounce the word "free healthcare" for fear of losing votes.
That's what I was contesting: far right is right at the centre of the political scene side by side with Trump, far left is not because it has no direct representation in the political system.
Unless you consider someone like Sanders a far left extremists, which is not.
> @moderators: have I earned the automatic downvote? Whatever I post shows zero points as soon as it is posted.
Hacker News tends to be pretty good about people not just downvoting posts because they disagree with them. However, that goes out the window when the discussion gets political.
I'd be really interested in seeing the numbers for upvotes and downvotes on political topics vs other topics. I wouldn't be surprised if you could train a classifier to spot political articles based on this distribution.
Down voting is a very blunt tool. Enough down votes can hide a comment. This means you aren't just saying "I disagree" but "this is so wrong no one should read it." It has its place but there's a reason you don't get to do it until your account has received enough upvotes.
