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Comment by pwinnski | Hacker News Reader

He accused people of brigading, rather than expressing their honest opinion. I'd downvote such an unsubstantiated (and false, at least in my case) statement if it weren't already so downvoted. I don't want to pile on, but they did write "something bad." Something can be "just an opinion" and still be "something bad."

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I'd say that the fact his post was downvoted kind of proves his point?

edit: Changed wording

Brigaded? Or downvoted by a number of people who saw it and recognized that it contained an specious accusation?

As I understand brigading, it involves calls from outside for people to come in, which I don't think it happening here at all.

Why do they need to downvote it. I'd just let it be.

If I post a comment suggesting that xeromal's distaste for downvoting is because they have a tendency to post low-effort comments and generally not contribute to healthy conversation, would you just let that be, too? Perhaps you would, but many people might expect an accusation they consider untrue to be worth downvoting.

This is an Ask HN. People are generally expected to upvote accurate answers and downvote inaccurate answers.

An answer which includes false accusations of brigading, praises Musk as brilliant, and suggests that all dissension is due to politics is unhelpful, inaccurate, and worth downvoting. As I said before, I'd have downvoted it myself, but it was already sufficiently downvoted.

I'd agree with you generally, but I think in the spirit of this very specific discussion we're on, downvoting any comments that goes against the status quo seems disingenuous. It's like those unpopular opinion questions on reddit. Someone actually posts one and they are downvoted.

Can you assert why this conversation is an exception, and what some of the guidelines of the standard for exceptions would be?

>As I understand brigading, it involves calls from outside for people to come in, which I don't think it happening here at all.

Here's 3 pretty good definitions, so you can understand me better.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brigading

Basically, the anti-elon crowd is manipulating the discussion on HN through mass downvoting and flagging of anyone they disagree with. The goal is to leave the appearance everyone hates Musk.

In terms of the 'outside or off HN" organization, there is a separate word for that but I can't remember it. Something to do with 'raiding' but this doesn't matter.

Can it not prove my point as well?

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