"I don't know why you are downvoted. "

How many times a day is this phrase written in Hacker News? How many times is it found on reddit?

The poster, in this specific case is not being downvoted.

The issue I think is understanding about how commenters and viewers use HN and reddit and upvote and downvote over time. If you understand this process you will no longer want to write "I don't know why" because you will understand the process.

I hope more people would understand the voting processes of these various discussion forums.

The poster was actually heavily downvoted, until I mentioned this, and now it isn't anymore.

I almost never complain about downvotes (as mentioned in HN guidelines), yet felt that there was a misunderstanding and a lack of full perception of the implications of what the downvoted message conveyed.

Truth is (again, as someone who is privacy-sensitive, and running a EU SaaS) this is going to be complicated to run an international SaaS, as a bootstrapper.

So was the actual comment "I do understand why you are being downvoted, and I disagree with the reasons" or "I do not understand why you are being downvoted?"

Because they are two different things.

We can figure out Paxos but can't figure out how to order a server in Europe.

He is being downvoted because he weights more the easiness of a business than the citizen's privacy.

Ah - I didn't read like "it's a bit of pain" (easy or not) but rather like the extra friction brought by this issue is going to stop many people from starting businesses, at all.

(for some context, I'm a French SaaS bootstrapper; I am as careful with my customers data as I can be, and found that starting a SaaS has been a major pain already - VAT rules, finding a SafeHarbor provider which doesn't suck at security, too etc).

> (for some context, I'm a French SaaS bootstrapper; I am as careful with my customers data as I can be, and found that starting a SaaS has been a major pain already - VAT rules, finding a SafeHarbor provider which doesn't suck at security, too etc).

I was talking about this to someone just now and it strikes me that all these regulations are very much wasted on startups during their creation. Maybe what we need is a way for startups to be able to playtest their idea and only have to worry about all the extra responsibilities once they're more certain about the results.

Exactly - having strategies to help new business get up to speed would help, if more friction keeps being added.

Because hacker news isn't dominated by people who actually create things anymore... certainly not startups.

At this point, upvotes and downvotes are mostly driven by a reddit-esque crowd with political grudges.