[enraged_camel]

What sucks is that even though you can’t see comment scores, you can clearly notice downvoted comments as their font is faded out.

So bandwagoning does happen, but only for controversial comments. This results in the reinforcement of groupthink and the rejection of ideas that don’t fit the mold.

[minimaxir]

The intent of graying comments is to deemphasize them and mitigate bandwagoning.

I do wish a 0-score would not show any graying though, in the case where this is an errant downvote.

[Myrmornis]

How does graying comments deemphasize them? It results in a different appearance which makes them stand out. Surely the optimal way to deemphasize something is to make it the same as everything else, almost by definition?

[awinder]

I really can not figure out why this comment was downvoted of all things. Downvote brigading is a problem on this site, this is one reason amongst others, how is this not a valid reply to parent.

[UncleEntity]

Probably because someone who believes that downvoting is a way to show they disagree with a comment disagreed with their comment...

(and, yes, I know this comment will get downvoted)

[detaro]

Note that "downvotes are not for disagreement" is a rule on e.g. reddit, but not on HN. (There's decade-old posts from pg about this, even back then others thought it's bad to allow this, but it's how it is.)

EDIT: one of those comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

[thesumofall]

I thought downvoting is capped at 4(?) while there is no limit to upvotes