It's not about the content of any single post; the point of astroturfing is to make that indistinguishable. It's about patterns of behavior, some of which are publicly visible and some not. When someone is using HN to advance the interests of a particular corporation, that's not good-faith community membership, and it breaks the organizing principle of this site—intellectual curiosity—egregiously.

Re your accounts, I'm not sure what has felt capricious and arbitrary to you, but from my perspective it's simply a matter of following the site guidelines and using HN in the intended spirit. We discussed that at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22173082 (but also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22359424). If there's some aspect of moderation that still isn't transparent to you (or anyone!) I'm happy to do my best to explain, and even happier to correct any mistakes. But it would be better to send those to hn@ycombinator.com.

I've been posting here for 8 years, and have never noticed moderation until one of the moderators points it out like the top of this thread.

Further, I have been posting on /. and other forums since the 90's and have never been banned.

If you are on your 51st account here, perhaps the problem is you and not with the people running the show.

As a person literally just used as an example of moderation practices above, I think dang and sctb do a really good job here. There's a lot of weird lines they have to walk. For example, that while Googlers defending their company can be astroturfing, Googlers also know a lot about Google and can contribute original info and answers others can't.

The HN guidelines haven't changed significantly in a long time, and dang and sctb miss a lot because HN is huge and nobody can read every comment, but they do a pretty good job when they step in. If you're on your 50th account, perhaps you should see if you can modify your posting to stay afloat of the rules. (On your 51st account, presumably, since you just told one of the moderators you're an account evading a ban.) And if you have questions or concerns about moderation, or feel you were unfairly impacted, there's a contact email in the footer and they're actually really good dudes you can talk to.

It baffles me why someone banned 49 times would want to participate the 50th time. This is like being kicked out of someone's house and coming in a different disguise each time.

At some point I'd just conclude they don't want me there and walk away.

I don't know about any other similarities, but "astroturfing" and "gaslighting" are English words that share this in common: they both have a useful meanings that seems to be primarily used correctly and in context; however they also are bandied about in non-canonical ways by a much smaller number of people with high repetition.

I'm really curious, do you feel that your (assuming they were) bans #1-49 were unjustified? If so, could you expand on why that's the case?