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Ask HN: Why are accounts that relentlessly spam HN allowed to persist?
For example:
https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=kids_book
- masonic 9y agoClickable: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=kids_book https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=kids_book
- tlb 9y agoThe spam catcher flagged all those submissions as dead, so they can't get to the front page or be commented on. If you don't want to see them at all on the new page, go to your profile and set Showdead to no.
- j_s 9y agoIf they are banned/shut down/deleted/whatever, that would probably lead to creating a new account. Best discussion of HN's shadowban/hellban approach I could find, from long ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6216996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6216996
- brudgers 9y agoThe moderators can provide a definitive answer and can be contacted using the link at the bottom of the page. If I had to speculate I would give two possible rationals: + Technically, it is easier to divert a known stream of waste with a computer script than to play the wakamole arms race. + Philosophically, persistent obnoxious promotion is not at odds with startup culture and startup culture is an aspect of Hacker News (for better or worse). In the end, the contents of the HN front page is not a bad key performance metric.