It&#x27;s not just the downvotes. They don&#x27;t help, but it&#x27;s also the responses.<p>There is a major psychological effect from getting <i>attacked</i> for stating an opinion you might hold to heart. As an avid reddit&#x2F;hn commenter, I feel it often.<p>I don&#x27;t really care if someone disagrees with me on something minor, but if it&#x27;s something I truly believe is important and I see people disagreeing with it left and right and downvoting anything in line with that opinion, it makes me feel weakness and despair.<p>Weakness: I am overwhelmed by the people disagreeing with me. I can&#x27;t answer everybody. Not because I don&#x27;t have the arguments but because it&#x27;s pointless, won&#x27;t lead anywhere and will achieve nothing but make me look insane. The &quot;hivemind&quot; effects makes widely-held opinions even stronger and minority opinions even weaker. Alone, I am powerless to counter that.<p>Despair: Let&#x27;s say someone thinks gays&#x2F;black&#x2F;women&#x2F;whatever shouldn&#x27;t [have some human right]. You truly believe that&#x27;s wrong. If someone says to me &quot;I think women shouldn&#x27;t have the right to vote&quot; and is impossible to convince, I feel pretty awful about it. I feel like that person is contributing in making the world worse, and I live in that world.<p>Now what if that&#x27;s not about some minority-held opinion, but about something far more widespear? What if it&#x27;s, for example, similarly insensitive and disgusting comments about islam&#x2F;muslims? I don&#x27;t just feel awful being around that person, I feel crushed by the amount of people who would agree with it. I&#x27;m quite afraid of what happens when such opinion is widely held. I feel like I&#x27;m looking at a lifetime of awful and I feel crushed by it.<p>My fiancée is a muslim. This is empathy kicking in. Not everything affects me that way, but I&#x27;m far less likely to comment on something I don&#x27;t hold to heart.<p>But yes, I do enjoy HN because the hivemind effect is far more limited. The hidden downvotes and sorting algorithms are a million times better than Reddit&#x27;s. It&#x27;s not ideal, but it&#x27;s still an excellent place to have discussion and a &quot;good enough&quot; place to have debates.