Ok, thanks for the link. It turns out that we had a very long email conversation about this last year. One of the things I said in it was "You're not and have never been shadowbanned".
As I explained back then, your submissions were getting filtered by software based on the following site guideline: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." When an account is using HN solely to submit its own stuff, our software interprets that as promotional. I gather that you disagree with this use of the word "promotional"—which is fair enough, but you seem to have forgotten all the lengthy explanations I sent you about exactly how our software works, why it works that way, and what you could do to stop being affected by it.
The bulk of this community, I'm pretty sure, agrees with us about moderating the site in this way. Why do I say that? Because that's why we wrote that software in the first place: community members kept telling us that they don't like it when accounts use HN solely to post their own material instead of participating in a more varied and curious way in the community. I don't believe most people here would agree with you that this is "silencing alternative viewpoints and subject matter that does not agree with HN moderators".
As for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30240159 (which is the current OP), it was killed because users flagged it. The reason users flagged it is no doubt the same as what I tried repeatedly to explain to you in the past: it's not using HN as intended.
By the way, the vast majority of users who email for help in such situations react very differently than you have: they are grateful for the clarification, understand how that software filter relates to the goals of the community (as expressed in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and agree to use the site as intended. They don't create prolonged antagonistic exchanges by disputing every point and complaining that they are singled out for unfair treatment. They don't try to stir up drama on HN itself with dramatic posts about censorship and moderator abuse. They simply go on to use HN in the intended spirit, and the problem disappears.
No comments yet.