HACKER Q&A
📣 newuserux

Why are new user accounts shadowbanned?


I’ve been a long time lurker of this site but made my first account the other day to chime in on a technical post in an area I specialize in. Sadly no one replied or engaged with what I thought was a decent comment. I didn’t think much of it and logged off. I was kind of shocked to see my post was invisible! I have to say, it left a sour taste in my mouth. On most communities shadowbanning is reserved for the worst trolls, not new users. I also thought it was strange to start a relationship off like that with dishonesty and it made me question what’s really going on with YC/HN. I don’t really expect them to change policy at this point but to say I was disappointed is an understatement.

  👤 LinuxBender Accepted Answer ✓
Why are new user accounts shadowbanned?

In my opinion the best way to get an answer to this would be to email the site moderator dang hn@ycombinator.com Perhaps the bot detection is somehow detecting on your IP or post incorrectly but only dang would be able to see what happened.

👤 Someone1234
I have showdead on and I'm not seeing any comments from this account. Normally if you were "shadow banned" the comments are still visible with show-dead.

Are you sure a technical issue didn't prevent your comments from submission?

👤 ars
If a new account gets downmodded on their first comment they will likely get permanently banned.

If your karma ever goes negative you will be banned. It's automated.

A new user should avoid controversial posts until they build up a karma cushion.

👤 MatthiasPortzel
Did you submit something?

If an account is created and then immediately submits a link, it will often be shadow banned. I browse with show-dead on, and many posts are dead for this reason.

I haven’t noticed very many dead comments, by comparison.

👤 motbus3
I have other account because some folks at work know my id on ycombinator and I don't feel comfortable using ask hn knowing that.

When i use that account to ask questions I never get anything. In fact, I noticed that the question does not even appear on the listings. I know it prevents lots of problems but probably reduce much the retention of new users.

What I needed to do was to use that account for a couple of weeks and it was ok after. Said that, I think this is a silly way of avoiding the problem.

👤 ThrowawayR2
Spamming and trolling coming from newly created accounts, obviously.
👤 add-sub-mul-div
It's not personal. The war for having nice things on the internet is lost. Spam and other bullshit are so omnipresent as to need automated removal. And automated removal will always have false positives and negatives. It's bots fighting bots, and every so often a real person gets to post something, as a treat.