This is recoiledsnake and in the interest of trying to set the record straight, here’s my attempt to explain my actions.
>Part of his/her/their m.o. is to talk constantly about there being an anti-Microsoft conspiracy on HN
Not really, I never claimed that the HN staff were biased. I used to think that it was users with flagging abilities acting on their own. I never claimed that there was a coordinated anti-MS conspiracy on HN. Ironically, it was right around the time of being hellbanned that I realized that the flamebait detector was playing a bigger role than I had thought. Everyone jumps into making multiple comments on Microsoft related stories, but they didn’t garner enough upvotes to avoid the flamebait detector since most of the commenters didn’t upvote the article. The flamebait detector seems to be doing the job of throwing out the baby with the bathwater in many cases.
Coming to the astroturfer part, I have never partaken in such activity. Not sure how I can prove it though. If someone wants to meet me personally in the DC metro area, I can show you my W2 tax forms, paystubs, my work email from the last few years and any other documents you want to see which will show that I have nothing to do with MS beyond using MS products at work and having MSDN access to Azure. I am on a work visa in the US, I can’t even work for anyone other than my employer, who is a government contractor for who I work on “boring” healthcare related websites. I am also a Linux user since 13 years! If anyone wants to meet me or has another idea, please contact me at the email in recoiledsnake’s HN profile.  https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=recoiledsnake
Ask HN: How can I prove that I am not really an astroturfer? What proof would one accept?
The other profile I had I created at work when I didn’t remember my accounts password. At home my desktop was logged into one account and laptop into the other. I would remote desktop into my home machine from work and browse so I would sometimes post from there.  Why would an astroturfer log into two profiles from the same home Comcast IP address which would take a semidecent admin all of half a second to see through?
Just before I got hellbanned, I was working a boring slow night shift at work and I got rate limited on my HN comments, so I created another profile from work  to continue being able to post.
Because of the (perceived) anti-MS and pro-Google/Apple bias in the HN comments and front page selection, I felt I like I had to counter balance it and correct people, so I’ll be the first to admit that I was overzealous at times. The fact that many commenters routinely launched personal attacks on me didn’t help matters either.  I noticed a marked uptick in such behavior from the past two years. Before, if you made a good point, people would agree even in heated arguments. Commenters using the ‘M$’ moniker were downvoted. Not so anymore, looks like more of the Slashdot crowd showed up here, after driving out rational thinkers from Slashdot and turning it into an empty shell of an echo chamber.
How do I know? This is my Slashdot profile, created over 10 years ago.  http://slashdot.org/~recoiledsnake
I just hope HN doesn’t fall into the same hole, but I see some of the same signs. At least on Slashdot you don’t get hellbanned if you happen to garner a few downvotes when your profile is new.
My reddit profile, created ~8 years ago. http://www.reddit.com/user/recoiledsnake I was a Reddit reader during times when Reddit didn’t even have comments! You will see the same pro-MS, anti-Google/Apple theme that you notice in my HN and Slashdot comments . Anyway there are a lot of HN commenters who are Google or Apple fans and even some  self declared Google employees who post a lot of anti-Apple comments. I am not sure why Microsoft fans/employees are held to a much higher standard.
Anyway, I went to the trouble of posting this because it pains me to see someone that I hold in high regard(PG) think that I am a paid astroturfer. I maybe an overzealous fan, but not an astroturfer. Being hellbanned and unable to post after painstakingly writing long comments after having a profile with ~9K karma and 7.86 avg karma per post is bad enough to cause me a lot of angst, but being accused of being a paid shill hurts at a visceral level. I don’t begrudge PG or the HN staff’s actions though. Being a sysops/devops guy and developer, I know that running such a site can be a challenging, tiring and thankless job, with people not appreciating the hard work behind it and concentrating on minor deficiencies. So thanks for all the fish.