I asked last year and was told 404 is the source of too many copycat low quality posts and they have a paywall. In the year since, a bunch of their original reporting has hit the front page and driven interesting discussions.

Just to clarify for anyone reading. 404 does not have a paywall. They have an account wall. Some articles require you to be signed into a free account to read.

For comparison, the Wall Street Journal does have a paywall but is not a banned site.

And 404 is also not banned, right?

As a noob here on HN, that's what I gathered from your previous comment:

> In the year since, a bunch of their original reporting has hit the front page

So, a year ago, before my time, 404 media was moderated in a way that seemed like a ban, but now it no longer appears to be shadowbanned, is that what I'm learning?

If a 404media article makes it to the front page, it's because enough people happened to vouch a [dead] article, which is quite unusual and involves a lot of luck (since most people don't have showdead enabled). Nothing has changed on the mod side as far as I'm aware.

Don't forget that complaining about paywalls is actually against the rules. So how did the site get that ban in the first place?