Hey, getting upvotes and comments from teammates or friends is not allowed on HN. It's considered manipulation and spamming here, and there's no surer way to turn the community against you!
We've banned the accounts that voted and commented here, as we do most accounts that behave promotionally like this. But if any of you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to let us know at hn@ycombinator.com. We're always happy to unban anyone who gives us reason to believe that they'll follow the rules in the future.
I'd have to see the specific case. It's true that we sometimes ban accounts for having distracting usernames, because they end up mildly (or not so mildly) trolling every thread they post to. But usually we'll post an explanation and invite the user to email us with a username they'd like to switch to. If you didn't see a comment like that, we likely banned the account for some other reason. For example, if a brand new account shows up and immediately break the site guidelines, we often just shadowban it, especially if there's reason to believe the account owner has done so many times before. That's part of the cat and mouse game between trolls, the software, and the mods. Past explanations of how we use shadowbanning are here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
We've banned the accounts that voted and commented here, as we do most accounts that behave promotionally like this. But if any of you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to let us know at hn@ycombinator.com. We're always happy to unban anyone who gives us reason to believe that they'll follow the rules in the future.