While I do think a certain one or two users have gotten a pass before, honestly it was a couple of years ago at this point and probably not worth considering today.

I wouldn't say that I have a particular side here, but I do see one unfortunate (to me) point of view dominating all conversations and that's not even something that's localized to HN. People bring their tendencies to bully online and drown out and attack their peers (i mean, just look at this thread) and in professional life this is also very real and the consequences are nasty. You can't moderate everything at the end of the day though, so no fault to you.

What does worry me is that there seems to be a growing sentiment on this board (as in life) that doxxing of ordinary people is okay even though this is a crowd that not only should know better but needs to be held to a higher standard because of our access to and skill with such data. It's simply not challenged enough, but that's also not your job either.

Even if you were to concede that, you'd probably counter that you can't read all the comments. And, of course, that is so. But that is beside the point that I have made many times before: the community's bias allows such users (and those who espouse certain views) to break the guidelines without penalty, while heavily penalizing others and those with contrary views.

Every time I see you tell someone that moderator bias is an illusion, I can't help but think that you are talking past each other, because the elephant in the room (which I have rarely seen you even acknowledge) is the extreme bias in the community's downvoting and flagging behavior, which naturally results in the official moderation actions being biased toward what is flagged, which amounts to a de facto official moderation bias. (If a community only calls the police when certain groups of people break the law, the police's actions will naturally be biased toward enforcing against those groups of people, because they aren't omniscient.)