I have noticed many of those too.

> their posts are rate limited

I don't like this one... if your comments are shadow banned or automatically hidden.. what's the point...

There's also a lot of editing going on, but most of the time, they let you know what was edited, which is nice, thanks.

When a "veteran" user flags a post, it apparently also gets a LOT of weight from what I heard... It might be why in some cases a post with a lot of momentum quickly falls off from the front page. There's probably other reasons too.

I know that if a user has multiple accounts, they also somehow connect them together to the same person (not sure if it is automatic). They connected multiple of my account but not all... Dang confirmed it (I try to increase privacy by switching account once in a while)

When you get 500 karma, you can down-vote...

> if your comments are shadow banned or automatically hidden.. what's the point...

The point is to prevent your continued participation in the community from doing more harm or, in the case of filters like rate limiting, to frustrate you until you leave or apologize and ask for the filter to be removed.

That's not your choice, or even the owners' choice, to make.

Goddamn I miss Totse. HN users strut around this place like they're Men of Letters but all HN really is, is Reddit with (somehow) even more self-righteousness.

You're not entirely wrong, but that's been baked into HN since the beginning, and yes it is absolutely the owners' choice to make. It's their house, their priorities, their rules.

But if it helps, they didn't even used to warn people beforehand. PG just pushed the button on you and you might not even know you were shadowbanned for years. At least you can vouch up unfairly banned comments now, and the mods give you warning.

If someone can't figure out that they're shadowbanned then they probably don't belong here anyway.

if nobody can see their comments anyways whats the point to not let them wast their time and post in the abyss?

>I don't like this one... if your comments are shadow banned or automatically hidden.. what's the point...

Oh I missed that one. It's separate from having your comments down ranked.

> I don't like this one... if your comments are shadow banned or automatically hidden.. what's the point...

“You’re posting too fast, please slow down” is just a signal that I have enough free time to find something better to do.

I emailed once, got a positive response and am still rate limited so, whatever…

> I don't like this one... if your comments are shadow banned or automatically hidden.. what's the point...

Shadow banning is a key moderation tool. If a user is trolling and they get banned, they just make a new account. If they get shadow banned, then no one engages with their content and they loose interest and go away.

I think that posts can be bumped to remain longer on the front page or penalized to need more up-votes to remain on the front page. This seems to be done automatically for some titles/websites. For example AFAIK Ask HN's are penalized by default.

You're right, except that we don't delete things outright.

Also note that all this lacks any kind of transparency.