Once the hive mind takes over and the downvote train starts it’s all but impossible to turn your post positive regardless of contrition. It’s unfortunate because it removes some incentive to publicly self-correct.
The public voting system is massively flawed when it comes to websites and sharing content. Since anyone who really wants visibility can just pay any number of services to boost their posts and comments, you have no idea what’s real and you have no idea what the general public actually supports.
For the average person who doesn’t think about what’s going on behind the scenes, it looks like an accurate representation of society’s interests and leanings. This is probably why we have a sharp uptick of far-right assholes and why so many young guys are turning towards sexist, racist figures online. The very same people who also proudly talk about how good they are at manipulating people. Hmmn.
This is why so many people edit their comments that are wrong and get corrected by someone else to say EDIT: CORRECTED BELOW or something, to prevent mindless downvotes from lazy people not reading the full chain of comments. Personally I think it’s worse like that but I can see why they do it if they care about karma.
I prefer people do that than either delete the comment, or edit the original. Otherwise the comment chain makes no sense, and people don’t get a chance to learn from the original incorrect comment.