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Comment by genewitch | Hacker News Reader

Kinda of ironic that you can't downvote/dislike on this site here without enough upvotes yourself...

How is that ironic? It's a well established spam prevention measure not a complete removal of a useful metric. It exists prominently on e.g. stack exchange sites and has been a common feature in general on reputation based forum software. What's perhaps ironic is that you can't see vote counts on HN comments _at all_ unless you're the author. So HN has already implemented this feature they just did it sensibly and included upvotes (on comments, at least) too. Most ironically, the front page shows only up-vote counts, something people are citing as a ruined experience in the case of YT removing the dislike count yet is par for the course for submissions on this very site.

That's not the solution proposed by youtube though: They're _never_ allowing you to "prove yourself" the way that hacker news does.

There are no dislike/downvote buttons on submissions on HN (only comments), no matter how much you "prove yourself"

"flag" is used as dislike

actually this is good because it helps to mitigate bot somehow.

To have full rights in a civilised society, you need to prove that you can be a good citizen first. What's wrong with that?

> To have full rights in a civilised society, you need to prove that you can be a good citizen first. What's wrong with that?

That’s literally not the case anywhere though. Maybe China’s social credit system, maybe, but even then I think you start with a presumed “innocence”.

I can’t think of any system of rights that are afforded after evidence merit and not birth. That’s not what rights are.

Not going to ask you what full rights means, as it implies you consider rights a gift from a government and not restrictions on a government.

How about driving licenses?

Privilege, not a right.

When is a thing merely a privilege, and not a right? Particularly when both can be conditional or qualified? I'm not sure this isn't playing a game of semantics--just because its called a privilege and not a right in the American context, does not mean that an argument that driving is not a right and merely a privilege.

Rights are restrictions people have placed on the government or has imposed on itself, as enumerated in say, a charter or constitution. These are not gifts from the government as list of things you can do, but a list of things they can’t do. Bestowed on birth, and infringed upon only when necessary as agreed upon by the people for reasons.

Privileges are features that may be taken for granted as rights but are not enumerated protections. You have no right to drive, it’s a privilege that we all agree is handy.

I don’t think you are playing with semantics, but this is not a difficult concept.

GP makes a completely baseless claim that you don’t have “full rights” until someone says you do. They are talking about privledges.

Downvoting is a privilege, not a right. Like driving a car on a public road. Don't nitpick words, speak to the main point.

Guilty until proven innocent is an incompatible maxim for civilised society.

Parent said full rights. Some rights must be earned or granted after some time period. A society that immediately gave children the right to drive and carry handguns would likely not stay civilized for long.

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