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Ask HN: HN user ghosted 5 years, why?

7 points by billme ↗ HN
Just randomly ran across a user that appears to have not realized their account was ghosted by mods 5 years ago; as in they have appear to have been commenting for 5 years not realizing that their account was ghosted.

As far as I am able to tell, they were out of line when they got ghosted, but wow, umm they may go the rest of their life using HN has a ghost.

Assuming they could fix there behavior, how does this make any sense? How many users are there like this?

9 comments

[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 32.0 ms ] thread
Nextgrid
I thought people with "showdead" enabled could see those and if they upvote enough of their comments the comments become visible and the user becomes unghosted. Is that not the case?
billme
Yes, that’s correct, if you have enough rep you’re able to “unghost the dead” and “see the dead” at any rep simply by creating an account, clicking “show dead” — though always assumed a user would notice or they’d just stop posting. Though there’s to my knowledge no easy way to only see the shadowban users aside from writing script that watches the new comments.

Pro tip, if normally people vote or comment on your comments, you’re not getting either, access HN via a private session without cookies and not signed in, then click to where your comment would be, if it not visible, you have been ghosted; to be extra sure, then create a throwaway account, click profile, turn on “show dead”, load the profile that might be shadowban, click comments, and if the comments say [DEAD] with no [FLAGGED] you have been shadowban; email mods if you have questions via the “contact” mailto link in the footer.

Now, looking at all the comments, some which intent appears to be helpful, makes me wonder if shadowlands for users are not as toxic as the behavior they seek to remove; that is they isolating a user, making they think no one cares to reply to them, etc.

tech-historian
Is "ghosted" the same thing as shadowbanned?
billme
Yes, that’s correct; meaning if you go to your profile, click “show dead” then click “comments” on the main navigation, then keep scrolling down, clicking more until you find a comment marked [DEAD] but not also [FLAGGED] — then click the users profile, then comments, then click through there comments; some will not be [DEAD] because a user had “show dead” on and unghosted the comment if they had enough rep.
dang
Why are you posting this here, where there's a high chance we wouldn't see it, instead of sending it to hn@ycombinator.com as the site guidelines ask? It seems to me that if you cared primarily about the user, as opposed to stirring up meta drama, you would do the thing that actually could help them.
[dead] bluntfang
You sound like a cop. Maybe if you didn't ghost people for 5 years, this wouldn't be an issue.
bluntfang
flagged. who woulda thought.
dang
Sorry for sounding like a cop, but could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to Hacker News? You've unfortunately been doing it a ton, and we ban that sort of account. Also, we've had to ask you about this multiple times before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html