That is completely false. There have been hundreds of accounts hellbanned for bad behavior. Here's a random sampling: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=giles

That is completely false. There have been hundreds of accounts hellbanned for bad behavior. Here's a random sampling: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gilesgoatboy http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gilesgoatboy http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sharkfish http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sharkfish http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=losethos http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=losethos http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Arrington http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Arrington if you turn on showdead in your profile, you'll see that all of these people tried to comment past their bannings, but they were silenced.