His feels too much like sneaky shadowbanning.

This is an interesting way of looking at it and I don't agree or disagree. In fact, I'm still out on whether or not kb's idea is good or bad. It isn't transparent but it's also not global in the sense that any one person or persons has control over the global feed. It would be a way for a single user to edit what is shown in their global feed in that moment. If done as a toggle, it would be less powerful that ignoring a user as it would act more like a filter than an action you take against people.

The thing that bothers me most about not allowing new users to post, and maybe this is just me, is that forums have done that. They've also shown on every thread how long a user has been around, given them titles for being around longer and being more active. But when you join a new forum, you can't do shit, you feel like a n00b, and, if the forum has been around for a while, there is no way you can ever compete with the top users who have been around forever. By nature, humans are competitive and when I see "most amazing user ever. 5838392 karma. joined 1029 days ago. ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆" it makes me want to make my numbers bigger. But I can't. And that inspires hopelessness and makes it more likely that I won't even stick around and comment and post because there's no way I can ever catch up.

By not showing these things next to every users post/comment, it doesn't inspire that competitiveness/hopelessness and I think people are more likely to stick around become part of the community. I may be wrong, but there are a couple forums that I really could've liked but just didn't feel like spending the energy trying to get to a point where I had enough shit not to be seen as a n00b.

I also never want Hubski to feel unwelcoming to new users. Ever.