If you defined "that" in "every social network does that" for HN and the other major social media sites, you'd realize just how different the definitions are. The differences matter.

It's surprising when you see it happen to your own content. Check out the reactions from people whose content has been secretly moderated that I quote here [1]

These aren't far right or left, it's everyone. Likely all of us have been secretly moderated at some point without our knowledge.

When I discovered this happening on the platform I used, I built a tool to let me know when it happened, and I published that tool for others to use. Now it sees 500k users per month. Similar tools could be built for all other sites that do this.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33916519

> even HN shadow bans people

HN also gives you an option to see this content in your account settings (showdead = yes).

> "There's no evidence people and tweets are being suppressed"

Wait, where is this one?

I'm sorry, but it doesn't take coordination to know that shadowbans exist. It's spoken openly on Twitter, there are tools to test accounts, etc. It's not surprising because it's open knowledge. No political persuasion necessary to be in the know here.

Are you sure those are the same people? It's not like HN is a hivemind...

The same coordination network which was used to agree that the first drop's response had to include "doing PR for the world's richest man", the same phrase magically repeated by a dozen establishment journalists.

The same thing happened with negative coverage of the tech industry by the mainstream media. Journalists kept acting like tech people were just being paranoid about the media. Then recently Yglesias casually tweeted that there was a topdown directive for negative coverage, and acted like it was no big deal and everyone should have known.