Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I noticed lately that a majority of show/launch hn posts I click on have text that is muted. I know this happens on down voted comments, but is this saying that people are down voting the post itself?
I've noticed this when I post "Ask HN" questions too - text seems to be muted immediately though, regardless of votes. It's kind of confusing since, as you say, elsewhere this means a comment has been downvoted.
