I've asked dang about this before and he answered that it gets killed automatically because of the sign-up wall on some of their articles and that their articles weren't considered suitable for HN in the past:
> does that mean every 404media.co article submission gets killed immediately by software and has to be vouched for before people can vote/comment on it?
Yes.
> Is that the case for every site with a signup wall as a sort of penalty
It depends on whether there are workarounds. Last I checked, 404media.co didn't have those. Your counterexample proves that it does, at least sometimes. Or maybe they changed something?
I'm open to unbanning that site but I'd like to be more sure than I am that this will continue to be the case in the future; and I guess I'd also like to see a few more good (for HN) articles from there before unbanning it. For a long while, all the articles I saw were pretty shallow and fluffy.
That was in 2024 so perhaps it's time for a re-evaluation. I'll shoot him another message.
> does that mean every 404media.co article submission gets killed immediately by software and has to be vouched for before people can vote/comment on it?
Yes.
> Is that the case for every site with a signup wall as a sort of penalty
It depends on whether there are workarounds. Last I checked, 404media.co didn't have those. Your counterexample proves that it does, at least sometimes. Or maybe they changed something?
I'm open to unbanning that site but I'd like to be more sure than I am that this will continue to be the case in the future; and I guess I'd also like to see a few more good (for HN) articles from there before unbanning it. For a long while, all the articles I saw were pretty shallow and fluffy.
That was in 2024 so perhaps it's time for a re-evaluation. I'll shoot him another message.