[brokencode]

Crazy that an honest question like this gets downvoted.

I honestly think the downvote button is pretty trash for online communities. It kills diversity of thought and discussion and leaves you with an echo chamber.

If you disagree with or dislike something, leave a response. Express your view. Save the downvotes for racism, calls for violence, etc.

[D-Machine]

Downvotes eventually turn all online communities into echo chambers, definitely. It is only a matter of time for HN, and you can see it accelerating in the past 1-2 years (though mostly on AI stuff, and mostly in downvote behaviour - it still remains surprisingly resilient overall).

[brokencode]

I feel like the only upside of the downvote is to act as sort of a mob moderation system, allowing offensive comments to naturally sink to the bottom.

Maybe in the future, platforms can have high quality auto moderation using AI to read every post and delete/flag those not following community guidelines.

I’m sure this would work well today, though not sure about the cost.