You're wrong, it's not obvious at all. Users here really do get shadowbanned from posting ALL links including ask HN posts. I know this for a fact because I'm one of them.
mindcrime isn't wrong—he was talking about the OP's submissions, not yours. Submissions can get autokilled for lots of reasons. Sometimes it's that a domain was banned for spamming, which mindcrime correctly pointed out.
Your account lost submission privileges for a different reason: you were posting a plethora of unsubstantive Ask HNs that users were flagging (and in fact repeatedly complained to us about).
>your account lost submission privileges for a different reason: you were posting a plethora of unsubstantive Ask HNs that users were flagging
Well that's a convenient explanation. But doesn't make any sense. On the day I "lost my submission privileges" I hadn't posted any Ask HN which had been flagged or could even be remotely considered unsubstantiated for at least 11 days. I already stopped talking about those topics entirely. (Not that I believe any of my posts were unsubstantiated, as they all affect internet users and the future of the internet at large) I lost it directly after posting a story critical of the US government(which got 80 points) and then was retroactively punished for posts I made in the past. Is that how this works? When you want to take someone out you look through their history for something they submitted weeks ago in the past and use it as your justification to ban them in the present?
It's simpler than that. We got complaints about your posts being unsubstantive, took a look at your submission history, saw that the complaints were correct, and removed submission privileges from your account.
Furthermore, if all it takes for you to take away someone's posting permissions is a few flags/complaints (That anyone with a bot farm who operates multiple accounts can submit) you should really grow a fucking spine. Thanks for confirming that government operatives can infact silence any user here, just the mechanism is a little different than I originally hypothesized, instead of having a backdoor throttling permissions all they need is a few proxy accounts instead, amazing!
Your account lost submission privileges for a different reason: you were posting a plethora of unsubstantive Ask HNs that users were flagging (and in fact repeatedly complained to us about).