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Comment by vintermann | Hacker News Reader

At least Hacker News isn't randomly suspending accounts without notice...I think.

HN is actually exceptionally good. They have an e-mail address that will respond to your requests promptly, explain what happened and why it happened and if you are reasonable they will be reasonable with you too.

Shadowbanning definitely happens on HN.

In a couple pretty well-defined cases, where it makes sense. Otherwise we tell people we're banning them, and why.

This is all discussed at length in past comments: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... If you or anyone has a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to answer it - but please familiarize yourself with the past answers first, because as far as I know it's all pretty thoroughly explained. Certainly that's the intention.

They are.

HN has a rich history of shadowbanning unwanted users. Everyone should turn on "showdead" on their profile, which, to be fair, is at least an option.

They really shouldn't. People don't get randomly shadowbanned. Turning it on just shows a whole lot of vile, aggressive, hysterical rubbish.

Do any social networks use GPT3 autogenerated replies to deceive the shadowbanned into thinking that they are not shouting into the void?

maybe get dall-e to make some trolling comments to even siphon off some of that vitriol into the void

"vile, aggressive, hysterical rubbish."

Also known as "wrongthink".

No. People who get shut down here aren't being targeted ideologically, they don't have a school of thought, they're not special, they're not even articulate. They're just narcissistic angry people shouting for their personal satisfaction at the expense of everybody else.

Most dead comments are rubbish. Some are only unpopular. 1 dead comment is enough to shadow ban a new account apparently.

It means you’ve been banned if you start having dead comments

> 1 dead comment is enough to shadow ban a new account apparently.

That's definitely not so.

I think I am shadow banned, any idea why?

Please email hn@ycombinator.com with this kind of question. That's in the site guidelines btw: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

It would be nice if I could privately message you on this board since my email account is not associated with my HN account... feels like a violation of privacy.

You would know. But I look at old comments when I see good comments dead for no clear reason. I lost track of how many had a few live comments, 1 dead for obvious reasons comment, and all dead comments after.

What are some examples? You might be seeing accounts that we banned, especially if the first dead comment is dead for obvious reasons.

If you see a [dead] post that shouldn't be dead, you can vouch for it by clicking on its timestamp, then clicking 'vouch' at the top of its page. There's a small karma threshold (> 30) before vouch links appear.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cvouch

> What are some examples?

I didn't keep records. I'll let you know the next time I see it if I remember.

> You might be seeing accounts that we banned, especially if the first dead comment is dead for obvious reasons.

1 comment was enough to ban some accounts? Did you think I meant automatically?

Thank you, I would have never known about this.

I always surf with "showdead" on. IME, around 98% of the "dead" posts are dead for good reason - either really obvious spam, or low-effort hostile snark in places where it's nowhere near being an appropriate response.

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