[oftenbanned]

Article doesn’t mention what I believe is one mod tool: shadow banning accounts based on IP. I had a bunch of accounts get shadowbanned for no evident reason and after a while I deduced it was based on using the account from a particular cafe’s WiFi. I just created this account and if I go use it from that place I will be banned again by some automated process.

[willvarfar]

Why did you have so many accounts in the first place? How many is "a bunch"?

[logfromblammo]

I spend enough time slacking off with just one account. I can't imagine getting anything done at all with two or three.

Perhaps that is done to avoid the rate limiter?

I can usually only make five posts in one 8-hour span, and then the sixth attempt says, "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks. Also, don't count the number of posts tptacek can make in one thread in one hour and compare it to your total for the entire week, or it might raise your blood pressure."

I am barred from having more than half a conversation in one day, while it seems that [some] others can post as often as they can hit "[reply]". So yes, I do feel censored on HN. The article didn't even mention the post-rate limits.

[ibebnndagan]

I've seen threads where he and his possey made up 50% of the comments, controlling the narrative and rallying their forces to down vote flag those who had the tenacity to disagree with them.

Also since you mentioned a particular user your comment will be removed. Funny how that works.

[logfromblammo]

I'm glad to see parent comment back from [dead], because I have also noticed it. That's why I mentioned that particular account in the first place. You can search in this very thread to see (as of now) 27 posts by that account, one admitting to robot-assisted vigilantism against certain types of users--namely racists, misogynists, and homophobes. One of the other matches mentions that he can occasionally be quite mean.

I can recall at least one instance where he replied to me directly, and I wanted to engage, but couldn't, because I was "posting too fast".

It's the network neutrality issue writ small. Some people have fast lanes on this site, and others have slow lanes. I don't like it here, and it annoys me when I notice it. If it becomes the status quo for the whole network, you can be sure that I will be engaging in "shovel vigilantism" in the dark of some nights. Freedoms of speech and publication are no longer supportive of liberty and equality when certain favored people are allocated 10000 times as much speech as most other people are usually allowed, and drown out all other voices with their sheer volume rather than the merit of their claims.

[oftenbanned]

Well only one at a time. Then as each gets banned I make another one. Note that they get banned if I just visit HN from the IP in question no posting required.

[dsr_]

... if all of your nyms get banned, it might be that you are consistently behaving in a way that the moderators don't like.

Have you considered, perhaps, changing your behavior?

[oftenbanned]

You’re not really comprehending what I am saying. If I create an account, never post or comment, and just browse HN from the IP in question, that account will be banned. It has nothing to do with behavior.

[dang]

Nobody gets banned just by browsing.

If you're concerned about a specific IP, and haven't been abusing HN, it should be easy to clear up by emailing [e-mail]. And even if you have been abusing HN, we're always happy to unban people (and/or their IPs) if they give us reason to believe that they've taken https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html to heart and will follow the rules in the future.

[oftenbanned]

This is not accurate based on my testing. If I browse to HN while logged in to my account from the affected network, that account can never post properly again.

[dsr_]

Yeah, that didn't come through at all. My apologies.

[have_faith]

Is it against the rules? I can think of lots of legitimate (and obviously nefarious) reasons someone would.

[uzoodoo]

Another shadowbanned user here. Used to be an occasional poster, made posts if I had something meaningful to add.

At some point I noticed that I never got replies, but didn't think much of it, continued posting. Then, one day I looked at my profile while I was logged out, and surprise - the the posts for the last few months are no longer there.

Like OP, I went through a few accounts. They worked for a bit, and then responses dropped off. Eventually, I realized that apparently, my new apartment's IP is toxic.

Not sure who a shadow ban is supposed to punish since any spam bot can check just as trivially of they're banned. On the other hand, legitimate users have no idea keep wasting their time submitting their comments to /dev/null.

By now I have given up on trying to comment on HN. I can use my time on better things.

Ironic that a the site like HN can't get a proper quoting markup, can't fix the pre-block scroll, took forever to add support for mobile and comment collapsing, and used blanket IP bans...

[krapp]

Banning by IP is so commonplace that it shouldn't need to be mentioned.

[oftenbanned]

I mention it because the article says shadowbanning is rare. It’s not that rare if they’ve got some kind of stored procedure that just goes around doing it.

[krapp]

It would make no sense to ban an IP for only a single session. Shadowbanning can still be rare (for whatever value of rare) when an IP ban is persistent.

[oftenbanned]

If you want to ban some IP, just serve 403 to that IP. Deleting all of the accounts of people who like to order toast and eggs in the morning at the same place is what makes no sense.

[krapp]

> Deleting all of the accounts of people who like to order toast and eggs in the morning at the same place is what makes no sense.

Shadowbans are reversible by users and can be appealed to the mods, assuming you notice it (which, by design, you're not supposed to.) This is supposed to ensure that only accounts which should be banned remained banned.

It's not perfect, but it does make sense - the only real options for banning are by IP and by account, so if you want to prevent a banned user from just making a new account, you have to ban the IP as well. Maybe someone was a troll and got that IP banned, maybe it appears on a blacklist (assuming HN checks that,) who knows? It's not random and arbitrary, though.

[detaro]

have you contacted the mods about this? It should be a fairly easy to verify and fix.

[ionised]

> I had a bunch of accounts

Maybe that is the problem.

[joering2]

He said he registered them from Public Wifi. So anyone registering first account on HN from said cafee will be banned?

Why are you so surprised he might have multiple accounts? You really have one email account? How about work-related email? Company-facing related email? If anything, its actually good he has multiple accounts and stuff related to / from his company account he is posting from company, and private is private.

[oftenbanned]

Actually I didn’t say that. The phenomenon in question has nothing to do with where the account was registered. The accounts get banned if I just browse to HN from that cafe. The first account that got banned that way was years old and had 5000+ karma. It took me a while to figure out that it was banned because you can still post and you can see your posts and vote and whatnot but nobody else can see your posts at all. It’s pretty evil.

[ionised]

> You really have one email account?

No, I have 5, but I only have one HN account. Why would I need more?

I was thinking more that he might have been identified as being the same person posting from multiple accounts, and activating some kind of spam/abuse protection.

[joering2]

> Why would I need more?

For same reason you have multiple email addresses no?

[ionised]

I have multiple email address for different purposes. I don't need multiple HN accounts for different purposes.

Others might but I can't think why off the top of my head. The only time I've seen an obvious alternate account is the throw-away accounts opened just to troll/spam the site.

[joering2]

One example would be is that you might work for a company and have their point of view expressed on HN all the time; meanwhile you want to have your own account personal one that regardless if you continue working for said company or not, you still continue to use. Sort of like TV anchors have their own private twitter hints and then they have their work ones too.