I have been. ( I would be surprised if you did see this message). Profile of the banned account is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dennis_jeeves
While I appreciate the complexity, effort and pains of what Dang and PG are doing there is some evidence that they are sensitive souls, and cannot stand even polite personal criticism. I cannot be sure of this however.
I looked at your comment history, and my guess is that you were banned for certain rants and health conspiracies, like this one:
Maybe it was the ones you didn't see? Bacause they were shadowbanned?
My post was about ethics, trying to be formal and simple about the question what is it to do the right thing. Basically it was about this: sometimes good is right, sometimes evil is right, so good can be wrong and evil can be right, and we have four things of which the main question is the question of right and wrong.
I wouldn't consider myself to be a "toxic personality" but being ghostbanned did piss me off a little. More than pacify me. I am pointing out a real ethical issue, not "escalating my bad behavior" by posting this comment is how I see it.
[Edit:]I love HN, it's one of the best sites I know. I'm just pointing out an aspect of it that I don't like. I might use different language now that I'm not as pissed anymore, but I would post it.
Being pissed off is a very reasonable emotion to being shadowbanned.
I'm sure you don't consider yourself toxic, but it's possible you were posting things that trolls or shills often post, and that resulted in you getting banned.
For example, there may be people astroturfing anti-vaccine misinformation on this site. Given public opinion polls and the revelations about all the money that goes into that movement, it's likely most anti-vaccine activism on the internet is made up of bots and paid astroturfers.
But if you're someone who genuinely believes the conspiracy theories, a site may end up banning you because you're indistinguishable from people are not sincere and not acting in good faith.
Any filter is going to have false positives, but that doesn't mean we should throw out the filter.
1) Increases the time it takes trolls to realize they need to create a new account.
2) Pacifies angry, malicious users who might escalate their bad behavior when instantly banned.
I haven't seen HN use shadowbanning to censor anyone. The people who are shadowbanned all seem to post unhinged, profane, off-topic, content-free rants.
Personally, I think it makes the community better. If you find it slimy and cowardly, perhaps you should vote with your feet and visit other communities instead. There are millions of other message boards.