When the physicists need burner phones, that's when you know America's changed

Since we've asked you many times to stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN and you've continued to do it repeatedly, I've banned this account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43223083 (March 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42661453 (Jan 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42526674 (Dec 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38225621 (Nov 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37358816 (Sept 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36994995 (Aug 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35646889 (April 2023)

dang, I have a question. I've found out that banned account can still post, it's just that their comments are automatically [dead]. But people still vouch for such comments regularly, so what does it actually mean to be banned?

The main thing being banned means is that the account's posts are killed by default—that is, they begin in the [dead] state, which is removed from the default public view. Users who turn on the 'showdead' setting in their profile can see all the [dead] comments, but no one else can.

Occasionally, a [dead] post is actually good for HN. (Even banned accounts sometimes post good submissions or comments, and we don't necessarily want those to remain invisible.) In such cases, users can vouch for the [dead] post to unkill it, i.e. to take it out of the [dead] state and restore it to full public visibility. Only a tiny fraction of [dead] posts get restored in this way, so the vast majority of posts by banned accounts remain [dead].

We're sometimes asked why we allow banned accounts to continue to post to HN (albeit in a [dead] state). Wouldn't it be better to block them altogether? It's a bit counterintuitive, but this would actually be worse. Many of the banned users would simply create new accounts—and those comments would be publicly visible until we caught them and banned them again. So, paradoxically, allowing banned accounts to keep posting (but in a default-invisible state) is the way to minimize their effect on HN. Trying to restrict them further would just end up exposing more people to the abusive posts.

The main disadvantage of this design, in my experience, is that users sometimes forget that they turned 'showdead' on in their profile, and then wonder why they're seeing such dreadful stuff in the comments! So if you turn 'showdead' on, please remember what this means: you're basically signing up to see the worst stuff that the internet has to offer on this forum.

Why turn the setting on at all? Well, many HN users are the curious sort who either want to see everything under the hood, or who feel strongly about censorship and want the freedom to decide for themselves what they think about banned accounts. Also, not all the posts that end up in the [dead] state are bad—there are many ways for a good post to end up [dead] by mistake (including false positives by spam filters), and users with 'showdead' turn on are able to vouch for those and restore them.

Thanks for the deep explanation. I understand the rationale, it's just I've seen pretty bad comments being vouched for (about as bad as could land you in the ban in the first place), so I wonder if there is any incentive to improve the commenting for the banned users.

The solution there is to take vouching rights away from the accounts that are vouching for bad comments.

But what were these comments that you're referring to? If they're as bad as you say, I need to see them.