Unless I'm missing something that's not true at all. Who are you talking about?
We ban accounts when they break the site rules at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We don't ban people for ideological reasons. That has the ironic effect of leading most partisans to see us as secretly aligned with the opposite ideology, but what can you do.
I had an account before this one that was shadowbanned one day with no notification at all.
I hadn't broken any stated rules. I had posted some points about IQ, which would be considered offensive or "harmful" from the leftist viewpoints that dominate the San Francisco tech overculture.
Probably this rule was the excuse: "We ban accounts that use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle, regardless of which politics they favor."
However, it seems very unlikely that this rule is enforced in an even-handed manner.
Thankfully, I haven't had this account banned yet, which is nice at least. But it does happen.
When people post comments like this they never supply links. Usually this is because what actually happened doesn't fit their narrative. What actually happened is almost always that they violated the site guidelines in a way that is plain to the majority of the audience here.
Certainly I made points that are culture war relevant a few times, but I think that account is clearly still within the rules. Certainly no rules were blatantly broken. I am human, but I've always engaged in good faith.
A warning, at least, would've been appropriate. But, it just got flat silent shadowbanned after a decent history of participation. I'd still love to know why.
Side note: "the majority of the audience agrees it's rule-breaking" should not be the standard you apply to determine what's rule-breaking. That's just a recipe for ideological uniformity; an obvious slippery slope into the space being being under the exclusive power of one tribe or another. A healthy discussion space needs moderators who will take unpopular positions and stick to the rules as written, in an even-handed way.
We ban accounts when they break the site rules at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We don't ban people for ideological reasons. That has the ironic effect of leading most partisans to see us as secretly aligned with the opposite ideology, but what can you do.