FWIW, as far as we can tell this account was part of a long-running Microsoft astroturfing campaign. You can never be 100% sure of these things, but astroturfers, like spammers, leave trails they don't realize they're leaving.

Had to look that up :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

Yes, even grass-root is not a very translatable word.

I find it pretty strange that shadowbanning is the default ((semi-) automatic) ban on Hacker News - it's one of the most cruel bans out there.

I can see your comments on the original article fine. I do not think that you are hellbanned. If you were shadow banned, won't the comments be invisible to me?

I can't post with that login anymore.

Site takes 30 sec to load each page and this comment was auto killed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6319430

I think HN has different kinds of "bans" and some may be temporary, but don't quote me on that. You may find that if you give it a day or two, that you will be able to post with your old account. If not, you can try emailing pg directly and plead your case to have the ban removed. No guarantees, but I've heard of other people doing that and getting things restored.

Is it an unfortunate side effect of an aggressive banning algorithm? The particular people downvoting were not 'out to get you' perhaps - just a side-effect of folks downvoting as usual to show disagreement, a valid HN behavior.

If your account had lived a little longer, others might have chimed in and restored balance. But an algorithm that works that way would leave HN open to griefers etc.

The guidelines say that downvoting to show disagreement is wrong.

I'd have to see that reference...pg has said from time to time that he does that himself.

Well, it's too bad you got banned. Blame microsofts rather aggressive astroturfing for the knee jerk response, I'd say.