Yes, that’s correct, if you have enough rep you’re able to “unghost the dead” and “see the dead” at any rep simply by creating an account, clicking “show dead” — though always assumed a user would notice or they’d just stop posting. Though there’s to my knowledge no easy way to only see the shadowban users aside from writing script that watches the new comments.

Pro tip, if normally people vote or comment on your comments, you’re not getting either, access HN via a private session without cookies and not signed in, then click to where your comment would be, if it not visible, you have been ghosted; to be extra sure, then create a throwaway account, click profile, turn on “show dead”, load the profile that might be shadowban, click comments, and if the comments say [DEAD] with no [FLAGGED] you have been shadowban; email mods if you have questions via the “contact” mailto link in the footer.

Now, looking at all the comments, some which intent appears to be helpful, makes me wonder if shadowlands for users are not as toxic as the behavior they seek to remove; that is they isolating a user, making they think no one cares to reply to them, etc.

Yes, that’s correct; meaning if you go to your profile, click “show dead” then click “comments” on the main navigation, then keep scrolling down, clicking more until you find a comment marked [DEAD] but not also [FLAGGED] — then click the users profile, then comments, then click through there comments; some will not be [DEAD] because a user had “show dead” on and unghosted the comment if they had enough rep.

Why are you posting this here, where there's a high chance we wouldn't see it, instead of sending it to hn@ycombinator.com as the site guidelines ask? It seems to me that if you cared primarily about the user, as opposed to stirring up meta drama, you would do the thing that actually could help them.