[cotelletta]

It also allows for plausible deniability to surgically remove certain viewpoints without anyone noticing. This is not an acceptable trade off if you value freedom of expression and have an understanding of how bad ideologues are at impartial moderation, confusing disagreement for low effort, lack of intelligence or insincerity.

HN has had a problem for years that heterodox views and facts on culture war issues are censored. The enforcement mechanisms are abused to do this. The mods deny it.

So either the mods are lying about their own actions, or they are not in control of their own site and sufficiently sophisticated flagging works to ban certain viewpoints.

If the latter is true, then shadowbanning is not getting rid of trolls, it is entrenching an elite of them.