It's generally not OK to bring up someone's past activity, whether that activity be on HN or elsewhere, as way of attacking someone in a discussion on HN. It fits within the "generic tangents" guideline. We can never know if they still agree with what they said or posted in the past. The submitter's history, and indeed the submitter's identity, is not really relevant to the substance of the article, and we want the discussion to be about the substance of the article. (Of course it's relevant if the submitter is the author, because then they can engage in Q&A about the article's content.)
If users notice that someone is posting large volumes of low-quality content (i.e., spam, self-promotional content or articles that break the guidelines) they can email us and we'll investigate.
In this case the user in question just posts a lot of stuff from mainstream publications on either side of the ideological centre – i.e., lots from the NY Times, Washington Post and The Atlantic but also WSJ and Bloomberg. The articles that are [dead] are from sites like The Information that are only banned due to being hard-paywalled.
It's obviously inflammatory to describe their pattern of posting as "propaganda". (Sure it can be argued and debated in the right context, but this is not that.) But even without the word "propaganda", the guidelines still ask us to keep discussions on-topic and to avoid generic tangents.
If users notice that someone is posting large volumes of low-quality content (i.e., spam, self-promotional content or articles that break the guidelines) they can email us and we'll investigate.
In this case the user in question just posts a lot of stuff from mainstream publications on either side of the ideological centre – i.e., lots from the NY Times, Washington Post and The Atlantic but also WSJ and Bloomberg. The articles that are [dead] are from sites like The Information that are only banned due to being hard-paywalled.
It's obviously inflammatory to describe their pattern of posting as "propaganda". (Sure it can be argued and debated in the right context, but this is not that.) But even without the word "propaganda", the guidelines still ask us to keep discussions on-topic and to avoid generic tangents.