[brashrat]

chilling effects need to be kept in perspective; for example, while I'm completely fearless about telling off the govt whenever I wish, no way I'm going to reveal how I feel about Snowden to the HN community: I'd be ostracized!

[alexpw]

We should hope that all perspectives could be voiced here, if they are reasoned well and non-combative. If we feel strongly about something, it usually signals the end of thought and the beginning of belief. It's valuable to understand an angle that challenges popular opinion, so that we can question our beliefs, begin to think again, and remember that everything is a probability, rather than an absolute.

Please consider sharing!

[tomc1985]

What about a negative opinions? OSTRACIZED! Didn't like someone's show HN? OSTRACIZED! Didn't make your post happy enough? OSTRACIZED! Cuss a bit? OSTRACIZED! Offend the army of apple/react/nodejs/cloud/social fanatics? OSTRACIZED!

Not that it matters, ostracization means losing a few HN epeen points, so meh :)

(In the interest of keeping topicality, one could argue the above are examples of chilling effects in a community)

[MichaelMoser123]

>Not that it matters, ostracization means losing a few HN epeen points, so meh :)

people who care to take part and comment here might be more sensitive to social approval than the median - the quest for approval might ba a motive to participate. Therefore the loss of a few points might be more of a loss for them. In the long run that is not so good for the diversity of opinions, but so it goes...

[BFatts]

You forgot the Android fanatics.