Comment by fc417fc802
13 hours ago
I've been noticing an unusual number of spuriously dead comments from accounts in good standing for a while now. My suspicion is false positives due to holding back the AI wave yet some of the casualties really don't seem to make any sense.
To be honest I don't think my account is in 100% good standing, but I can't say for certain. There's definitely some dead comments on my account that are deserved and I think there are some small limitations that are or have been placed on it (probably fairly). Mostly around flagging and vouching.
I think that if you get a certain number of comments flagged or downvoted within a certain time window, your account gets flagged as a spammer and has a permanent rate limit applied. Above another threshold, it gets shadowbanned. I think the length of the account's history is also relevant. But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia
Yeah, I have seen several people who are completely shadowbanned (all comments dead) without any visible reason. There seems to be no way to report this.
Just email hn@ycombinator.com and Dang will look into it. He responds quick and will always address any concerns.