> I have heard from users having as many as a thousand karma points that were shadowbanned without warning
I don't think that can be true, at least not in the last 12 years. Far more likely is that someone incorrectly concluded that they were shadowbanned. But if anyone wants us to check a specific username, we'd be happy to do so.
People come to all kinds of mistaken conclusions, especially when they're upset about something that we or someone else did on HN. Self-reports of this kind, especially about being banned, are mostly unreliable.
though there must have been backroom warnings, the disappearance of breckyunits feels a bit Soviet
Considered that it seems intellectually valuable (~nontrivially eutriptic) for an outsider or breck(/g?????m) to understand what part of his value system was diametrically opposed to the spirit of HNtopia
The humaneness seemed at worst ambiguous but that's not the issue.. maybe self-compassion was?
By Soviet I meant more of inscrutability: [unsatisfactory] window into _why_ someone was thrown out of a window, not how.
Apparently that "unsatisfactory" does have (imagined) personal component for me. The process, for you, was less imagined.. so.. okay. I should be more careful next time
I don't think that can be true, at least not in the last 12 years. Far more likely is that someone incorrectly concluded that they were shadowbanned. But if anyone wants us to check a specific username, we'd be happy to do so.
People come to all kinds of mistaken conclusions, especially when they're upset about something that we or someone else did on HN. Self-reports of this kind, especially about being banned, are mostly unreliable.