[sillysaurus3]

One other software trick: Certain comments and certain accounts are marked unvouchable. You would never know this from the outside. https://imgur.com/5GMh3Nw

(For example, this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18076424 I'm not saying it was a good comment, just that the mods do have that power and that they do exercise it, further giving the appearance that the community is on their side.)

EDIT: Note that I tried to edit my comment below (posted as shawn), but a side effect of making a comment unvouchable is that it becomes un-editable. My edit was dropped. Here it is:

To recap my points for anyone who is listening:

- Many comments that are [flagged] are not in fact flagged by the community, but manually, by Dan.

- When you are banned, it is no longer possible to use HN: All of your comments start at the very bottom, and very few people know what `showdead` even is, let alone use it. You cannot submit more than two comments every five hours. And if you have submitted any comment, you cannot submit any stories.

(Obviously, that's the point of a ban, but Dan likes to pretend that the vouch system is in place to catch just such an occurrence. That leads me to my final point:

- Some of the comments that are [dead] are unvouchable. If you try, the software will simply register your vouch but do nothing. This further cements the impression that the community is on their side.

Note how tremendously difficult it is to even let anybody know what is going on, let alone to do anything about it. This is no coincidence; HN has apparently gone to great lengths to ensure that it is just so.

Except, it's not HN doing this. It appears to be one person.