Downvoting has turned me off Reddit. Often it's just downright petty and results in an overly dull experience. I'm what they would call a Liberal in the US but will often try to read opinions from the other side - Reddit labels those as "Controversial". I've occasionally committed "wrongthink" there myself and it's rather disheartening to know that few will ever read what I had to say. It's no wonder that contrarians have all but abandoned the platform.
I find it interesting that HN also has downvotes yet somehow manages to not have the same vibe.
HN generally sets the expectations that downvotes are only for off-topic or non-helpful posts. Someone disagreeing productively should get your upvote - even if you still disagree with them.
Subreddits often become a way for mods to push their agenda. There are exceptions to this - /r/moderatepolitics has done a decent job of becoming a good place for across-the-aisle discussion, etc. Unfortunately even productive subreddits get raided by crazy people and extremists from time to time.
HN by not having scores (visible to anyone but you) prevents the "playing for internet points" game. As a user you have very little history and exposure to others so each argument is generally standalone. Whereas on reddit someone will dig through my comment history and bring up the subreddits I'm on ("Oh, you claim to be a moderate so you're really just a nazi!") or stalk me, that kind of bad behavior is just not possible on something like HN.
You do still get a degree of downvoting for unpopular opinions even if they're made in a calm, reasoned manner. But I agree in general. You have mostly relatively mature, rational participants and, someone has to have something of a positive track record before they can downvote. Plus there is a degree of active moderation. None of these individually is a silver bullet but the combination works better than most places.
Reddit used to set that expectation too. I think HN's restriction of the downvote button to relatively high-karma users has a much bigger impact than (or at least in combination with) the cultural expectation.
Nah, this site has as bad groupthink as Reddit. It's more useful to keep tabs on what the STEM knowledge class believes than it is for useful discussion. Try arguing in favor of copyright, or that everyone here uses social media as a scapegoat to absolve themselves of their own inaction, and watch the hive mind turn its eye on you.
Interestingly, Reddit now has a policy of warning users for upvoting "wrong." It's a very clear case of like what we tell you to like, hate what we tell you to hate.
To solidify getting rid of "wrongthink", they removed the upvote+downvote count.
Previously, even for opinions people largely disagreed with, you could see what number of people agreed with it. They changed it to showing only net numbers. I think this made it easy to use automated suppression mechanism i.e. they could read comments with algorithms and downvote automatically.
This was back when they were not banning subreddits for wrongthink, they were merely suppressing it.
I find it interesting that HN also has downvotes yet somehow manages to not have the same vibe.