[palata]

It seems like your negative sentiment above has been downvoted a lot, and I understand your frustration. Your comment was indeed not offensive.

But I believe it was just that: a negative sentiment. Not exactly a "constructive, intelligent criticism". And when you go there, the reality is that people will vote to reflect their own opinion. If you say "This project is so amazing!" and get a ton of upvotes, it does not mean that your comment is super useful; just that many people agree. Similarly, if you say "Naah, it sucks" and get a ton of downvotes, it means that many people disagree. Not that they want to silent you.

Now try an actual constructive criticism: you may get downvotes (that's how it is because people are emotional beings), but probably upvotes as well if you bring interesting insights.

> There is only the possibility of harm by continuing any discussion under these circumstances.

That's fair. I think one mistake there is that you should have started with a constructive criticism rather than an admittedly polite "naaaah, I think it sucks".

[trod123]

There is no point, even my previous response was significantly downvoted, and that was quite constructive which contradicts your entire statement.

You might suggest such, but this has the effect of just baiting me for a response so it can be marked down more where you are engaging me for the effect to further punish.

You see these people don't do this because of their opinion, they do it because it causes psychological harm, its a totalitarian tactic that is not unknown. Silencing was used somewhat heavily during Hitler's rise to power.

Forcing the only conversation to first agree before moving forward, at any point, causes you to fight your own psychology to remain consistent and the process warps you subtly. Most aren't self-reflective enough to notice but the effect is the same regardless.

Robert Cialdini wrote quite a lot about the various lever of influences that are often used as mental compulsion/coercion, and Joost Meerloo and Robert Lifton both cover these structures and techniques in detail in the context of WW2 torture and moving forward. These behavioral structures run parallel with those of the Nazi's, and other totalitarian regimes.

This is what is happening, and when mild conversation causes this type of behavior, this is the time you should be most greatly concerned because its arbitrary, causes mass delusion, and continues until destruction, albeit slow, overtakes that group.

As far as I'm concerned, the people doing this can ride their train right to their own demise for all I care. They are true evil, and they'll be doing the world a favor when that happens. The rules of society will no longer protect them once they destroy society.

We were taught from children to not be violent. This is violence, there is no excuse for bullying, and people are no better than animals if they can't reason and be civil. What one does in small things, they do first in large things that matter.

If they want to be violent for a mild comment like that, they won't get anything from me, and I'll reciprocate in the only way I can right now, withdrawing and not providing anything of value.

I'll pray I never meet them in person because if you or anyone else tries to harm me, I'll be exacting an equal or greater cost in self-defense.

This destructive behavior is despicable on so many levels, and you say its not so bad but you don't realize just how bad it gets, this behavior promoting menticide, and robotization is what led to the gas chambers in Germany during WW2.

When no one questions rationally, or can express disagreement, evil flourishes. You can't ever argue with evil, you have to kill it, as we had to do during WW2 (at great cost).

Read the notes from the Wannasee Conference, or if you can't be bothered, rent Conspiracy (2001). The history is well documented by experts who studied these things to prevent it from ever happening again, and yet it seems no one has learned their lessons since they repeat it yet again.

They are emotional beings (/s), can you imagine that being a valid defense of Nazism during WW2? For the deaths of all those Jews in the camps? If it's unjustifiable at the extremes, it is unjustifiable anywhere.

These are the same things, the only difference is perspective and the fact that you don't have perfect information upfront at the bottom level, you only ever find out afterwards, and its a goose-step death march ever forward and people don't realize this is how it works. One step at a time, pivoting, with no questions.

This is only the beginning, and when you can't stop it early, then its too late to do anything later to prevent the massive destruction that these people inevitably bring on themselves and everyone else.

This is why it is so damn important to protect and maintain freedom of speech in a civil atmosphere. There can be no rational support for this behavior, not ever.

Please stop making excuses for the truly evil.

[palata]

Well, moderation is very hard. I guess in an ideal world people would be able to upvote/downvote based solely on the quality of the comment, and flag for moderation when they genuinely think a comment is unacceptable. In such a world, your polite "nah it sucks" would still be downvoted (because it's neither insightful nor pleasant for Lichess supporters, let's be honest) but it would not disappear; it would just appear at the bottom of the list and you wouldn't know how many people disagreed with you. But that's not how it is, so your comment looks like it got moderated when actually I genuinely believe it just got downvoted by many people.

Now I would not compare this to Nazism or call it "true evil". Try to pick someone randomly in the street, go talk to them and politely explain why you find them unattractive (e.g. "I just would like to say that anyone finding you attractive would have pretty low standards"). Would you call it Nazism if they asked you to leave them alone?

[trod123]

When you silence people, you isolate them.

Isolation does weird things to the mind, one of which distorts reflected appraisal, other parts where reflected appraisal is denied in communications are even more impactful. It induces a involuntary hypnotic states which varies in intensity by exposure.

The tortured takes on mannerisms of the torturer, and when denied communication, or only distorted reflected apprsail long enough their entire being unravels, and you have psychotic break or disassociate completely. The psychotic break is a semi-lucid state where planning is capable. To make an apt comparison, an active shooter might fall into this latter category. Years of investigations into what causes these people to do what they did, and the powers that be can only say with certainty that these people were bullied, but no clear cause can be found.

Coercion is a dangerous thing.

You can corroborate what I've said with the literature in the books I mentioned, or with isolation studies where the studies had to be cancelled early for the safety of the study participants. There is a lot of research out there.

Destroying someone's identity, their personality, what makes them them, is true evil, and these structures are how you do it which is why its so important to recognize the problem, few do.

Your comparison is apples to oranges. It is not asking someone a opinion, its silencing them entirely by force, where they are disadvantaged when they don't answer. There is a very big distinction between the two.

[palata]

> When you silence people, you isolate them.

I do understand, and it is unfortunate that moderation gets mixed up with score. If you have a better solution, feel free to explain it! Because not moderating at all is a problem in its own.

[trod123]

It wasn't always like that. The actual solution is something that all forums have done for decades starting in the 90s with BBS/moderated usenet groups.

You only allow moderators to do the actual moderating. You don't allow upvotes or downvotes because they are used following a sybil attack structure (many sock-puppet accounts to one person) to silence or amplify messages.

You have a flag button (which they already have in place for HN), to report content that should be flagged for violating rules.

Those that report spurious (good) content get warned/punished for abusing the flag features. They may have the feature silently revoked (shadowbanned) for abuses, or banned for other activity suggesting the accounts are sockpuppets (i.e. going directly to an article when normal viewing requires first loading the index, then following a link with the associated metadata including the referrer to get to the page to make a report.

It really is that simple.

This moderates, and it limits bad actors, its still done in most online forums that are still around; because it works.

[palata]

> Those that report spurious (good) content get warned/punished for abusing the flag features.

What about this? Sounds like it may "silence" people who flag stuff that [those in power] think should not be flagged. How is that different from you thinking that you are silenced because people did not like what you wrote? Someone could feel like they get silenced/warned/punished because they genuinely flag what they see as inappropriate content, right?