Hacker News Reader

I presume you're referring to the ab original inhabitants? Sadly, quite effective.

That was pre-industrialization, though, and mostly due to things like smallpox for which indigenous population had no resistance, even before actual immigration from Europe.

I fail to see what the ugly part of the American past has to do with the current thread. Your comment feels a lot like Whataboutism[0] to me.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Can someone explain to me the downvotes?

I can only derive from them that someone thinks that what I wrote is wrong. Maybe I am missing something and I just do not know.

It appears a number of people use downvote to mean "I disagree". I suppose they think HN is Facebook.

Also of course some people use it correctly, which confounds the data.

its own