It's good that GP posted that. I didn't initially clock that it was AI slop. Their message prompted me to look at the poster profile, which immediately showed this was a bot. That in turn meant I downvoted that message, which increases the signal that it's a bot. The community has something to gain from it. Downvotes are not strong, visible signals. A message it.
Flagging != downvoting, be sure to actually flag. Flagging & moving on or emailing is the advice of the guidelines. I don't think replying is something GP should have been downvoted themselves for though.
I don't see an option to flag a comment.
For whatever reason, the site makes you click the direct link to the particular comment you want to flag. I.e. the timestamp link. For posts you generally always click a direct link (via the comments link) so that's why it's obvious for posts.
If you opt to have "showdead" enabled in your profile you'll still see flagged comments but marked as [dead]. In this case you can also vouch for comments in the same fashion (or add another flag to make it harder to be vouched for).
I think it's something like >30 karma to flag/vouch posts (so you should well qualify). This means users actually gain that well before the ability to downvote... but the site sure does a good job of hiding that from them lol.
TIL, thanks! :D
How can you downvote anything? I see not such button on my HN UI
The downvote feature requires even more karma to unlock. Something like >500 IIRC. Downvoting is only possible on comments (not stories) and a down arrow will just appear (no settings to change etc) below the up arrow once you qualify.