> How can you know this?

What? You asked my why my comments are about HN and not FB, and I said it's because up-thread a wider assertion was made about all shadowbanning, which is what we're talking about at this point.

> If you remove one person that discourse, and therefor the community, has changed. So shadowbanning being harmful is more of an opinion of whether all voices should be heard or not.

The people that own and or run the forum ultimately control the community. They may let the community exert pressure on them, but button line, they control it, and anyone that's under some other impression needs to come to term with reality. Those people want different types of communities, and will take different steps to ensure they get what they want. People that do not like those steps, or the communities that develop, have the choice of exerting pressure on the people that run it or on other community members, or they can choose to go elsewhere.

HN is not a public resource. It's a private resource that allows the general public. If you want to make a case that FB is special because it's so big and everyone is on it, that's one thing. Clearly define why and what the criteria is, and we can discuss whether that makes sense or not or breaks down in practice or how it could be games. But to expect that if I stand up a little forum with dozens of users to discuss specifics of care and restoration of the Datsun 240z and I'm contending a persistent forum spammer that's putting gratuitous messages about penis enlargement and I find that banner works for minutes but shadow banning seems to actually solve the problem in most cases, I think it's ridiculous to think that most the small community would be up in arms over how I was being deceitful to them about not showing them this spam.

I get that you might think DB and HN and Reddit are bit public resources and might have to obey a different standard. If you do, please outline what makes them different and how we determine that. If you don't, and think everyone should obey this standard, please explain why my theoretical little car forum that is entirely maintained and moderated by me should even care what the forum members thing if I'm happy with the community as is without any of the people that might left because they don't like how I run it?

> You do realize that everybody aligning means everybody is the same right?

Why'd you even bother to post this? I half moment's thought would make it obvious that I'm talking about aligning a very specific subset of items, namely behavior, as I specifically stated.

Communication is only possible with a shared understanding of some base. At the lowest level, that's generally language, but it can be extended to other norms to make communication easier and less error prone.

> (cue “some opinions don’t matter” statement)

It's not that they don't matter, it's that they don't matter in some contexts to some people, and are thus inappropriate. Does Joe Bob's weekly rant about whoever the current politician that has his ire is matter? Possibly. Does it matter and is it appropriate on a small car enthusiast forum? Nope, and he has no right to have it shown there, nor expectation that if he posts it there that others should see it, whether he thinks they do or not.