I don't want to link to the comments because the comments themselves aren't the evidence. After participating in a few threads where I politely argued some ide

I don't want to link to the comments because the comments themselves aren't the evidence. After participating in a few threads where I politely argued some ideas that were unwanted, my account was shadow banned. I didn't realize it for a while actually. Discovering that the mods read my comments and somehow thought the account needed to be banned was pretty insulting to me. I really appreciate HN and the broader YC community and so being singled out that way for making polite and respectful arguments was (I think) really rude and inappropriate on the part of the mods. When I emailed the mods to discuss, the excuse was that there was a "flame war". In my opinion, respectful discussion is productive even if both parties talk past each other a bit for a while until something closer to a consensus is achieved. We are at an important time in the history of the US and I think it is profoundly irresponsible of the HN mods to try to ban any sort of political discussion from HN. Over the years I've learned a great deal from HN, most of it technical but occasionally have gotten some valuable political insights as well. Also, occasionally reading a political interpretation from someone whose technical views I respect can be really mind expanding.