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Why do you think people expecting to get banned wouldn't be affected by them? Those that are aware of the existence of hellbanning probably won't be impeded ver
by jfoster 12y ago
Why do you think people expecting to get banned wouldn't be affected by them? Those that are aware of the existence of hellbanning probably won't be impeded very much, but I'm not convinced that hellbanning is widely known of. I'm sure lots of HN participants are aware of the existence of hellbans, but I think your average troll may not be. They may eventually figure it out, but if it slows them down, it has already done something good.
- ryanlol 12y agoHellbanning is most definitely widely known of where it is used. It maybe useful in a few individual cases, but most definitely not always. (And that's all ignoring the ethical issues)
- danneu 12y agoI don't know about that, and it depends how it's implemented. HN broadcasts the fact that it hellbans users. There's even a toggle in your profile to see the posts of the damned. HN also seems to gratuitously hellban people - if someone isn't hellbanned for being an obvious troll, sometimes they seem to be hellbanned over lightweight snark or nothing at all. HN even has its own notoriously hellbanned "HN celebrity": the creator of Temple OS. It's no secret. Yet every day I notice hellbanned posts where the user has been hellbanned for some time now and they do not notice. On my forum, I only hellban users so uncontroversially egregious (bots, spammers, and people who only post to pilfer value from the community) that nobody notices or would care if they did. To "expose" the system, a user would pretty much have to create a topic like this: "Hey everyone, you don't know me because I've been trying to PM new users with links to my competing forum for half a year, but I just found out that nobody has been receiving my PMs because I've been hellbanned. Help me protest this system!"