Dang, I grew up in Soviet Union and what I see in the last couple days looks exactly like communists doing in 30s (removing unwanted people from photos, firing from work, kids betraying their parents to authority, etc). While I don’t know the history of this account, I don’t think this comparison is far fetched and it is way closer than I thought I will ever see after coming to US 20 something years ago.

I hear you, but there are many ways of making the same point without breaking HN's rules, which call for avoiding flamebait, snark, name-calling and so on. For example, the way you've made your point here is well within the site guidelines. Also, please keep in mind that I didn't ban the GP account for that comment, but rather for a consistent pattern of breaking the rules and flouting our many requests to stop.

HN's guidelines are not ideologically driven. They're designed to help the site achieve its mandate of being a place for intellectually curious conversation [1]. People can't be in curiosity mode and battle mode at the same time—the nervous system doesn't work that way. (They probably can't be in curiosity mode and ideology mode at the same time either, but that's not really where we draw the line.)

When accounts are using HN for battle, smiting enemies, lashing out, and generally contributing to burning this place down, we ask them to stop, and if after repeated warnings they don't stop, we ban them. That's not because we disagree with them ideologically—we ban all accounts that do this regardless of what side they're on. It's because it's the only way to preserve this community and prevent it from destroying itself the way internet forums usually do [2,3]. The goal is for HN is to stay interesting, and scorched earth isn't interesting [4]. We've tried to be true to this core value from the beginning; it hasn't changed and won't change for as long as we can manage to keep it. We do get better over time at articulating it and iterating on the ruleset for keeping it [5].

Actually, the irony is that such accounts resemble the corresponding enemy accounts (and vice versa) far more than either set resembles the majority of users here, who are coming to the site in curiosity mode.

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

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[5] The guidelines have changed a lot in the last year or two. For example, they used to say "Be civil", but now they say "Be kind". That wording reflects the intended spirit better. There are many other things like that, but none of them have changed the core value of the site—they're all an attempt to serve and preserve it better.

As I said, I don’t know the history of this account but this specific comment that got it banned doesn’t look bad to me.

BTW, I would personally ban all politics from HN.

You do have to know something of the history of the account in order to really respond to our banning it. We wouldn't have banned it just for that one post, even though it obviously breaks the site guidelines by being flamebait and name-calling ('thoughtcrimes') and ideological battle.

Banning all politics from HN is not an option, for reasons I've explained many times. See the links here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25723581.

I downvoted you because it's ridiculous to compare what companies do to what a state does. Private companies do not have the option of disappearing you. Your rights are between you and the state, not you and a company.

Until the companies being discussed have the right to use force against you your argument holds no water.

My reading of current events are that we are more likely headed towards modern Russia where journalists are imprisoned or murdered for not supporting populist ideals than we are headed towards some sort of communist state.

I mean Trump did everything in his power to become the next Putin.

Your concern about sending people to the Gulag is pretty far-fetched.