If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
(p.s. Just to pre-empt the usual: no, this is not a defense of Big Gambling, just an attempted defense of HN thread quality.)
Wait until your account is shadow banned and you post in the void for weeks/months before noticing
(apologies if arguing about mod decisions is frowned upon, I didn't see anything in the rules about it)
I’m respect your wishes but you can’t say you have told me anything if I didn’t see it here, sorry Dan but that’s only fair since there’s no way for me to see your message unless I randomly go back.
If you want to ensure people see these messages, then that’s a feature you’ll need to add. I’m fine with you using the email on my account for this purpose, too, but I’m not fine with getting a single message from you here and you expecting me to have seen anything else you’ve said in the past. As far as I’m concerned this is the first I’ve seen you ask me about this.
No affiliation, just a happy user. Also not trying to say you must use sth like that or anything, just a piece of software I’ve enjoyed. :-)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43875947 (May 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36265350 (June 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36062502 (May 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35449790 (April 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32190475 (July 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32146436 (July 2022)
Also if people were downvoting my comments it’d be different but it’s just you for a frw recent ones down modding then, because before you get here they were up or even. Moderators should focus on those truly displaying bad behavior, I’m just swearing and saying relevant things.
I have a very long history of good comments here, arguing otherwise seems suspect, honestly.
I’ll back off like you say but I don’t agree at all. I’ve read the guidelines and tend to follow them.
Edit: I see like 3-4 questionable comments from me, two of who’ve are barely questionable. I get what you’re saying about the language but it’s really amazing you’ve targeted me here today, this us such low hanging fruit here, don’t you have better things to deal with? I’ll write better comments but I’m just really annoyed at your characterization of my behavior, it is very unfair in my eyes. I’ve done very good comments for ages and emotional language like this is rare for me. I expect better from mods here.
What attracts our attention are, in this order: (1) a post that breaks the site guidelines; (2) the other comments by that account; (3) whether we've posted moderation replies to that account before. It's true that that the username is what links (1), (2), and (3), but what we're paying attention to is mostly the content.
I think one factor here may be the tendency, which we all have, to underestimate the provocation in your own statements and overestimate it in others [1]. Those two distortions compound into quite a skew [2], and makes it easy to feel like one is being singled out or treated unfairly [3].
Beyond that, when you run across other posts breaking the site guidelines and going unmoderated, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that the moderators are biased or secretly agreeing with those other posts. But this is a mistake. Overwhelmingly the reason for this is simply that we didn't see those other posts. We can't moderate what we don't see, and we don't come close to seeing everything on HN (or even 10% of it) - there is way too much. [4]
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
And this helped weed out all but the most addicted gamblers. Now there is no friction, the platforms are free to create dark patterns to encourage problem gambling, and the vice has zero social cost.
Frankly, being able to buy drugs and alcohol online is probably a mistake, too.
It was almost certainly easier for most people to buy drugs than gamble illegally when both were illegal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_...
Note that it was not a close decision:
> Opinion of the Court
>The Court announced a 7–2 judgment in favor of Murphy on May 14, 2018, reversing the Third Circuit.[25] Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, and Neil Gorsuch and in part by Justice Stephen Breyer.[26][27][28] The majority opinion agreed that §§ 3701(1) of PASPA commandeered power from the states to regulate their own gambling industries and thus was unconstitutional. It followed New York v. United States and reversed the Third Circuit decision.
Prohibition had some unintended consequences.