> people who point out obscure titles are downvoted in most cases, and eventually shadow-banned
Nothing like this happens! Nobody gets banned for pointing out anything about titles. People only get banned ("shadow" or otherwise) for serial abuse or trolling (and only after multiple warnings), or for spamming. Comments only get downvoted if more people disagree than agree with the title suggestion or the way it's suggested. It's no big deal. It's how opinions are expressed and debated on HN.
> The HN post is entitled merely "tunni.gg".
That's Tunnl.gg [1], and it would have been fine for the page's heading to be added to the HN title (that routinely happens when software projects on Github are submitted). It's also not terrible for just the project name to be there, because the name of the project (a variant of the word "Tunnel") hints at what it is. But we're not dogmatic about it, and anybody could have emailed us (hn@ycombinator.com) to suggest a better title we would have given it due consideration and replied appreciatively. We do that multiple times each day.
> You see plenty of similarly and intentionally obscure titles on HN daily. Try calling them out and see what happens.
“Intentionally obscure” isn't the right framing. Maybe we don't always want to clobber people over the head with obviousness. The joy of surprising discovery is an important part of the HN experience.
But the key principles – (a) respect the original work of the author/publisher and (b) don't mislead or disrespect the HN audience with clickbait or false information – have proven to be the most stable and defensible over time. There's still plenty of room for discernment in the way those principles are applied on a case-by-case basis.
[1] >>46145902