Ask HN: can a user be silently censored here? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: can a user be silently censored here?

13 pointswonderer5 comments

Hmm, I've noticed for a few weeks now that none my comments get upvoted nor downvoted nor replied to.

I didn't think too much of it and carried on with my life.

Today, I thought I'd verify just for kicks if in fact I'm being censored here. Surprise! After logging out, none my comments show up when I visit a story where I commented.

In my own logged in view, the "comments" tab shows my comments. And I can see my comment among all the other comments too.

I'm definitely surprised at what I just saw. FAQ doesn't say anything about this. No notice on my profile page that I'm being censored.

Bug or censoring? Amazing.

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I remember reading a little while back that if you get marked as a troll, you can continue to comment on articles but nobody else will see them but you. This makes the troll effectively a ghost, thinking they are commenting normally but really the comments are going into a void. Maybe you were incorrectly designated as such?

Interesting. The problem with this moderation setup is that a real troll (that is, trolling because they enjoy the response they get) is going to catch on pretty quickly.

It's called a hellban. You can continue to read and comment, but no other users see your contributions. It's a really good way to deal with users who are posting spam (if you browse with showdead turned on, you'll occasionally see long dead posts filled with links), or trolls. If there were an indicator of a hellban, it would be somewhat ineffective, because then users would just make new accounts.

Anyways, looking at your comment history, there doesn't seem to be anything that deserves it. No spam, just a few lightly downvoted comments. But there's a lot going on behind the scenes, and most of this is automated, so you probably just ran into whatever indicators or metrics HN uses to determine whether to hellban users (or take away their ability to flag, or whatever else). The only way to deal with it is probably to email PG, if you want your old account back.

Which account is it?

Failing that, what's its karma? Its average? Do you flame? Troll? Spam?

anonymous246

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