I wasn't insinuating, I was stating. These types of troll/propaganda/astroturf accounts are obvious on the left/right or pro/anti-US side of things on Twitter/reddit and are similarly obvious here. You banned the specific account I mentioned for trolling.

I was unaware that discussing astroturfing, trolling, and propaganda on HN was prohibited. Apologies, I will refrain from calling attention to it in the future.

Ok—please don't state it without evidence either!

I know it looks and feels super obvious, but I assure you this is an illusion. On the internet, people are orders of magnitude too quick to leap from "random user with obviously wrong opinion" to "obvious bot/astroturfer/paid shill". It's a crazy bias. We look into this stuff all the time, and 99% of the time it's just that some people disagree with you. More than 99% actually.

Even when we ban an account for trolling, that's almost always someone whose sincere passions about a topic led them to violate the guidelines and not stop when we asked them to stop. That's not astroturfing. People are just very passionate about divisive issues.