This shadow rate-limiting is so disgusting. The user doesn't know about it, she writes a comment or submit a news and sees a info message "slow down" which makes no sense at all (2 comments per day displays it, yah). A rough mod rate-limited my account, some years ago to only 2 comments per day. And there is no way to recover the account.
HN doesn't support free speech, very unfortunate that pg isn't around anymore to sweep up. It turned from startup, SV and VC news to a popular but unfocused news site, sponsored by whoever.