I know it's perfectly fine, I'm trying to follow this (very common) line of thought and adherents never seem to explain it in a way I can understand.
For one thing you're not really 'censoring' anything but even if we say, for the sake of argument, that you are why should it have some cost different than the cost of 'promoting' something when you upvote? The mods' argument that meta is bad for actual conversation is also quite compelling. What's the counter to that other than stuff that mostly seems to boil down to some version of 'getting downvotes kind of feels bad' (of which calling downvotes 'censoring' seems like a particularly overwrought variant).
Thanks for taking the time to bring up these counterpoints!
>why should it have some cost different than the cost of 'promoting' something when you upvote
If this is a blocker, show both! My recommendation to add the tiniest bit of friction only to the anonymous negative was an attempt to reflect existing site guidelines. My apologies if terminology is a distraction; I did add "censuring" as a better word.
>mods' argument that meta is bad for actual conversation
Up/down votes are currently only public on the receiver's side, and this meta gamification powers HN. Would revealing the other side of the equation deter abuse of anonymous control (with an acceptable level of side effects)? All I can answer for sure is that intervention for downvote abuse (if any) is behind-the-scenes for now.
[I assume] the pool of eligible downvoters continues to grow; maybe when the time comes the next step will be another moderator rather than crowdsourcing -- the precedent of hiding individual comment scores seems relevant.
For one thing you're not really 'censoring' anything but even if we say, for the sake of argument, that you are why should it have some cost different than the cost of 'promoting' something when you upvote? The mods' argument that meta is bad for actual conversation is also quite compelling. What's the counter to that other than stuff that mostly seems to boil down to some version of 'getting downvotes kind of feels bad' (of which calling downvotes 'censoring' seems like a particularly overwrought variant).