So I posted a comment criticizing the fact that the mods revoked my upvoting privs. That prompted a HN user to reach out to me via Keybase, who shared some of my experiences. Apparently his voting privs were revoked back in 2014 or so.

My other comment got flagged, so if I want other people to also reach out and submit stories, I have no choice but to repost yet another comment. This will be the last one for awhile.

If you have similar stories of abuse by the HN moderators, I encourage you to reach out and share them with me. Unlike pretty much anyone else, I happen to care a lot about this. This feels unethical, since there's nowhere else for us to go. We all helped shape this community into what it is today.

I'll be collating the experiences and posting them somewhere. At least people will know what's happening to those who participate on HN.

The mods' standard defense is always the same: We have more data. We know better than you. It's our job. You can't possibly understand and we certainly don't have time to explain it.

And the front page appears to work and the comments appear to be good on HN, so nobody sticks up or tries to change anything.

But that's little consolation to those who have to suffer the gaslighting effect of having their privileges passive-aggressively yanked from them without explanation, with no choice other than to grovel to hn@ycombinator.com or switch accounts.

I'm up to four others who have contacted me so far. It's taken months of effort to even get those few. But I'm convinced there are very many people in similar situations. We just never hear about it because you're not allowed to talk about it.

It's very annoying that I'm no longer allowed to upvote. Providing sources is something that should not be downvoted.

Also mods, if you're reading, fuck you for revoking my upvoting privileges. I did nothing to deserve that. Especially not for three months and counting.

EDIT: Just got a very interesting keybase message from a user who shares my experience. His voting privs have been revoked since 2014. Apparently I get to look forward to years of this, for reasons that were never explained at all. (I tried asking.)

If you have similar stories of abuse, I encourage you to send them over to me. I've been collecting them and will hopefully write ... something. I'm not sure what, yet. All I know is that we all helped make this community what it is today, and there's nowhere else to go.