"This is going to get downvoted but..." is just complaining about down votes. It's not a rule, but the community tends to down vote for complaining about down votes.
Ok, thanks for the explanation. Of course the accusation wasn't directed to everyone: unfortunately elsewhere it's getting very common for some... well, let's call them fans, to silence any critics to anything Raspberry, even those trying to be constructive.
One doesn't simply use the word "shill" on HN or they consider themselves lucky they're not downvoted to hell, flagged or banned on the first sight. You're free to tell whatever comes to your mind on HN except when it comes to talk about shilling. For some strange reason even seeing the word it pushes everybody's buttons.
That "some strange reason" seems pretty obvious to me. It's an insulting attack against the person, rather than discussing the content of their comment. It's little different from calling someone an "idiot" or "jackass." In a way, it's worse: being an idiot or a jackass is at least somewhat innate, whereas shilling is a deliberate choice to disrupt a community in exchange for money.
You're portraying it like somebody directly calls or implies another one shill, but that is almost always not what happens in HN comments. The comments I generally see in HN complaining about shilling are about either products or companies and most of the time they are top post (ie. not an answer to another comment, and even when they are not top posts they are not addressed to the comments or commenters they are replying to. I've yet to see a commenter explicitly or implicitly blaming another commenter a shill. (and it wouldn't be logical anyway, calling attention to shilling about a topic is more effective than arguing with individual commenters which may or may not be shills).
"Shills will downvote this to death" is pretty obviously directed at other people on the site. Does it really need to be directed at a specific person to count?
