on HN, the mods are directly responsible for the chilling effect. they censor anyone who doesn't tow the company line, or has any kind of strong dissenting opinion. this is achieved by shadow bans, single-IP bans, and then finally by flagging every single IP they've ever logged in under as blacklisted for new account creation.
i cycled through 3 or 4 accounts with multiple-thousand-points of karma, but in the end i just stopped giving a shit. this sort of amateur-level banning may work against your typical troll, but on HN, the end result is you're wiping out diversity of opinion, because although the people on here are smart and resourceful enough to get around any ban that happens over the internet, at some point it just becomes not worth it just to express your opinion -- that's how censorship actually works in the real world.
at the end of the day, YC is a VC and has interests to protect.
>"on HN, the mods are directly responsible for the chilling effect. they censor anyone who doesn't tow the company line, or has any kind of strong dissenting opinion ..."
What is the company line exactly? Is it just maintaing agreement with YC-backed companies?
I hadn't heard about the shadow bans, are they only on submissions or commenting too?
i cycled through 3 or 4 accounts with multiple-thousand-points of karma, but in the end i just stopped giving a shit. this sort of amateur-level banning may work against your typical troll, but on HN, the end result is you're wiping out diversity of opinion, because although the people on here are smart and resourceful enough to get around any ban that happens over the internet, at some point it just becomes not worth it just to express your opinion -- that's how censorship actually works in the real world.
at the end of the day, YC is a VC and has interests to protect.