You can also email us to get unbanned if you want to use the site as intended. We're happy to unban people who give us reason to believe that they'll follow the rules in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How is one to email to get unbanned if one is not aware of the ban? That’s the whole POINT of the shadow ban that HN implemented. One little mistake (or two word post in OP’s case), and you’re shouting at the wall.

So with due respect, Kafkaesque suggestions to contact the mods don’t help. What would help is getting rid of juvenile practices that are arguably ineffective, i. e., shadow bans.

We usually tell people that we've banned them. There are exceptions, mostly for spammers and serial trolls.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=we%27ve%20banned&sort=byDate&d...