In one to one communication with a person, when one wants to put less emphasis on a certain item, it is advisable to make mention of it less.
In print media, when you need to put less emphasis on a certain block of text or you want to make it less prominent, for whatever reason, you can use different ways e.g. use a smaller font.
Similarly, in the world of User Interface and User Experience, sometimes it is required to make an operation less evident, for different reasons like:
- the operation is not used much or
- the operation can potentially be disastrous for User or Business (e.g. deletion of account) etc.
When such a case occurs and HTML element you are using for the operation is a button like:
try using a hyper-link instead for de-emphasizing. Same example: