First of all, it would be nice of you to at least looked at the responses to this comment, and reminded users that many of those are explicitly against HN guidelines (which is objectively true, with comments like just "What on earth?" [1], and my comment is essentially stating an opinion clearly acceptable in e.g. Singapore, and I know one of your goals on HN is to not be completely US-centric). Browbeating is clearly not what HN is for, and IMO allowing it would cause a lot more damage than allowing accounts primarily used for politics. Curious political discussion has some real content, browbeating doesn't.
Secondly, the effect of that policy is to essentially ban accountants with unpopular political opinions on one side of the spectrum (because people don't want to associate it with their normal work, for obvious reasons). One evidence for this is that you've probably banned more accounts on one side of political spectrum with that rationale. That should be easy to check, since the politics of accounts which use HN primarily for politics should be quite clear from their commenting history. I'm not accusing you of personal conscious bias against right-wingers in moderation here, I'm just pointing out that policy would result in more of them getting banned, since more of them have no choice but to try to conceal their identity (due to "consequences" at work, etc.). Remember what happened to Brendan Eich?
Thirdly, I disagree with your characterization of my comments as "ideological battle". I'm merely stating my political opinions, I have tried to never escalate into personal attacks, and I have tried to always add something concrete and interesting to the discussion, along the HN'a norm of intellectual curiosity. To me, ideological "battle" would imply the kind of dogmatic political rallying I got in response to my comment.
Finally, it seems that you are banning my account on a first strike. I don't remember having any previous negative interaction with the mods.
P.S. After posting this, I also noticed that you have "shadow banned" me, in the sense that my comment looks completely normal to myself when logged in, but I can't find a trace of it when logged out. That's an unethical practice in my books, and something that you have explicitly stated that you reserve for spammers and serial trolls [2].
Shadowbanning means banning someone without telling them. I just told you.
I did look at the replies and it's true that some of them were terrible and against the site guidelines, but your account was by far the greatest problem, given that you initiated a flamewar and perpetuated it with 20+ comments. Pointing the finger at others, when you've broken the rules so badly yourself, is not a good look. One might mention individual responsibility as a value here.
I think you make an interesting point about ideological asymmetry. Maybe there is a systemic factor in that way—or maybe it's just that certain classes of account are more likely to fulminate and otherwise break the rules ("commit more crimes", as some might say in another context)—or maybe both? I don't know, and I don't see what difference it would make to moderation. Should the fire department hose two sides of a burning house equally, regardless of which way the wind is blowing, lest it give an appearance of bias? It's our job to prevent this place from burning itself down. For that we have certain rules and we apply them as evenhandedly as we know how. That involves pointing the hose where the fire is.
If you or anyone thinks the rules aren't optimal, I'd be happy to hear suggestions for better rules—as long as everyone understands that "better" has a clear definition in HN's context, because we're optimizing for one specific thing (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
First of all, it would be nice of you to at least looked at the responses to this comment, and reminded users that many of those are explicitly against HN guidelines (which is objectively true, with comments like just "What on earth?" [1], and my comment is essentially stating an opinion clearly acceptable in e.g. Singapore, and I know one of your goals on HN is to not be completely US-centric). Browbeating is clearly not what HN is for, and IMO allowing it would cause a lot more damage than allowing accounts primarily used for politics. Curious political discussion has some real content, browbeating doesn't.
Secondly, the effect of that policy is to essentially ban accountants with unpopular political opinions on one side of the spectrum (because people don't want to associate it with their normal work, for obvious reasons). One evidence for this is that you've probably banned more accounts on one side of political spectrum with that rationale. That should be easy to check, since the politics of accounts which use HN primarily for politics should be quite clear from their commenting history. I'm not accusing you of personal conscious bias against right-wingers in moderation here, I'm just pointing out that policy would result in more of them getting banned, since more of them have no choice but to try to conceal their identity (due to "consequences" at work, etc.). Remember what happened to Brendan Eich?
Thirdly, I disagree with your characterization of my comments as "ideological battle". I'm merely stating my political opinions, I have tried to never escalate into personal attacks, and I have tried to always add something concrete and interesting to the discussion, along the HN'a norm of intellectual curiosity. To me, ideological "battle" would imply the kind of dogmatic political rallying I got in response to my comment.
Finally, it seems that you are banning my account on a first strike. I don't remember having any previous negative interaction with the mods.
P.S. After posting this, I also noticed that you have "shadow banned" me, in the sense that my comment looks completely normal to myself when logged in, but I can't find a trace of it when logged out. That's an unethical practice in my books, and something that you have explicitly stated that you reserve for spammers and serial trolls [2].
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544213
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30342925