Ask HN: How does the comment suppression on here work?

[radcon]

I can see that my comments are now automatically buried -- I'm curious how that works and what triggers it. I tested this on a brand new account by posting a 1-sentence comment in the same thread and it automatically showed up at the top, just like normal.

It seems like this penalty is manually (and arbitrarily) applied by the moderators with no warning or explanation. Is that correct?

[moocowtruck]

I'm pretty sure they call it shadow banning. IMO it's a pretty elitist thing to do, but hey they run the place..

[detaro]

Autokilled comments would still show to users with showdead enabled - I don't see any dead comments from you.

[radcon → detaro]

This is different, the comments are simply pushed to the bottom of the page instead of hidden.

Usually, when you post a new comment it's boosted to the top for a short period of time. Now, the opposite is happening.