

Ask HN: Can a domain be shadowbanned? - philbo

A couple of days ago, I posted this:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9393122<p>It got 4 upvotes in the first 20 minutes or so, presumably from people I work with because I&#x27;d shared it in a work chatroom. But it never appeared on the front page and sank off &#x2F;newest pretty quickly. At the time, I saw something else on the front page that only had 3 upvotes.<p>I don&#x27;t <i>think</i> I&#x27;m shadowbanned, because I&#x27;ve posted other stuff that people have responded to in the past. Hence the question; the domain is for my employer&#x27;s dev blog so I just wanted to check. Could it be &#x2F; is it shadowbanned?
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DanBC
HN has a number of protective mechanisms. No-one but HN staff knows exactly
what these are. I think that sharing a post in a work chatroom - causing a
rapid influx of upvotes - will trigger one of those mechanisms. Asking for
upvotes is not allowed and that seems to be what you inadvertently did.

There are domains that are banned on HN - submitting those will get you either
a "try again" message, or will post an article that shows in your feed as
dead. Your submission isn't either of those.

It is a bit frustrating that good posts (like yours) are caught by the
filters, especially when there are people who spew out two or three
submissions a day to not particularly good articles or there are vote-rings
who've learnt to stagger their upvotes over a few hours.

EDIT: if you had noticed quickly and then emailed HN they may have been able
to remove the penalty. I think they've said they will do that. It might be
worth submitting the post again in a few days?

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philbo
Clickable:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9393122](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9393122)

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staunch
You most likely set off the voting ring detector which then penalized your
post, making it drop off.

