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....
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....
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