> I don't understand why shadowbanning would be so effective
Because if done correctly the user never knows they are shadow-banned. It sounds trivial when you know _how_ the shadowban is done. But for instance, instead of an IP check, perhaps it's a time check - after 3 days it comes into play. Or a combination of different checks. So imagine that you are accessing a service that appears to be working correctly .... you would basically need to a) determine that that service even does shadowbanning, and b) think of infinite ways that you might be shadowbanned and try to determine if that's the case.
Shadowbanning is very real on many platforms. It is a method designed to ban a user without pushback from the user and minimize the ability of them to work around the ban. Explicitly lying to users like this, even the bad ones, should be something that is banned the by government. If you paid money for a service and they tricked you into not receiving the service without telling you this wouldn’t be allowed, but for some reason it’s okay to trample on the expectations of users when giving out free service.
> Does any social media platform take part in shadow banning? How has that worked out?
Reddit does, but I don't know how well it actually works since everyone is aware of it and can easily detect when they've been shadowbanned by simply using a second account.
>I think Shadowban has an important role in spammers and (heavy) trolls.
Shadowban is a common knowledge at this point, writing a script that checks if the account is shadowbanned is trivial. At this point it only hurts actual users.
>You say that as if it's fact, but I'm not sure it is.
How is it not? Shadowbans by definition are deceptive; their whole intent is to deceive the poster into thinking that their message was sent and is readable.
If you post and your message appears to appear on the thread but only you can read it then...you are being deceived. The message board software is lying to you.
Since it is the moderators who decide that then it's the relationship between you (the poster) and the moderators that determines whether or not your post actually successfully completes or if you're being lied to.
That is what I mean when I say that shadowbans inject a factor of deceit into the poster/moderator relationship.
It's possible to argue that it doesn't, but it's also possible to argue that the moon is made of green cheese as well. Neither argument is the truth.
>There are places in the internet you can go to make sure you are heard and you can say whatever you want.
And there are places where if you are banned, you know it; if your comment is removed, you know it. My qualm in this thread is about the deceptive practice of shadowbanning.
> If you prefer to post here instead of there, then some examination on why that is might be warranted, and specifically whether the thing you are complaining about helps or hinders making this place somewhere you feel worth spending time.
May I ask -was it your intent to come off as being condescending and borderline insulting? If not, you ought to be aware that is how that sentence came off. And I'll tell you for nothing that being talked down to after spending 25 years on the internet does NOT contribute positively towards HN being a place worth spending time in.
It's also a hand-wave -meaning a distraction from my primary point which is about shadowbanning and the fact it injects a note of deceit into the moderator/user relationship.
There are pluses and minuses to everything; good points and bad points. Obviously since I will continue posting in HN I see more positive points than negative ones -but that does not change the fact ...and it is a fact... that I believe (and have no reason not to believe) that shadowbans have a negative effect on the larger community that they're practiced on. They make HN a place less worth coming to, and the fact that there are positives reasons to come to HN does not change that.
So -to long didn't read summary; shadowbans undermine posters' faith in moderators and serve to undermine the credibility of moderation as a whole.
>whilst leaving the "problem" completely in the dark with regards to what it was they did wrong.
This is the original intent.
As far as I understood shadowbanning was for nefarious actors such as spambots, manual spammers, etc so they'd keep going without automatically creating new accounts.
> Bans, yes, people get punished for breaking the rules. But having your posts quietly vanish without warning?
This comment particularly stuck out to me.
Very few other communication platforms of Reddit's ilk will go through the process of shadowbanning users - that is - the user still has full functionality of the site, however their comments are not visible to other users; only themselves. To an unknowing user, it appears no action has been taken on their account.
It is a shockingly effective means of silencing dissenters or those who disagree with the majority; and this punishment has extended far beyond those who speak abusively/offensively. The nefarious part is wasting the user's time as well.
I'm a mod of a default subreddit. We can't shadowban people from the entire site, but we can use AutoModerator to moderate comments and shadowban users in a specific subreddit based on certain criteria (e.g. one day old account with negative comment karma or if account mentions certain keywords) or by manually adding a user to a shadowban list. This is separate from reddit's built-in subreddit ban, which is much more obvious.
It's possible (and sounds a lot like) he got banned/shadowbanned in /r/news and the mods there thought his self-promotion went too far and got reported for spam to maybe be banned outright from reddit. That seems excessive though. I usually just tell people to do a better job contributing to reddit if they're being spammy, and I only report people when they're creating new accounts to harass others.
> Because evidence has shown when you waste the time of people doing this, they move on.
I'm not convinced of this. At best, shadow-banning wastes a little bit of their time and delays slightly their inevitable creation of a new account.
> If you instantly ban them, its easy to spot, easy to automate and doesn't really solve the problem.
Shadowbanning only really works for unsophisticated users. If you know it's a possibility, it's easy to check for (just create another account and check with it). Phisher's are probably going to be fairly sophisticated, since they're working to make a profit, not to only disrupt or push a POV.
>I suspect people behind CGNAT and other such technologies may be flagged as bots because one of their peers is tainting their IP address' reputation, or maybe something else is going on on a network level
This is a thing that is absolutely happening, I got temporarily shadowbanned for spam on Reddit the day I switched to T-Mobile Home Internet which is CGNAT'd, and I didn't post a single thing
>Only administrators or automatic spam detection tools can shadowban. Regular moderators cannot.
Regular mods see shadowbanned posts in the modqueue. In my case, the admins confirmed the automated spam detection snowbanned my account shortly after I paid for Reddit Gold.
>You didn't have a premium account and you weren't above the rules.
I didn't break any rules or expect any special treatment, all I wanted was a silly badge...
>Being picky, mean or downright unpleasant will get you banned you from certain places.
I have never been warned or banned for any of this type of behavior on reddit.
It is critical to assume the other party is writing in good faith when interacting IMO.
> Hacker News does shadowbans too which I am not happy about, but that's another story.
We almost never do that anymore except in cases of spammers or new accounts that appear to be trolling, i.e. the cases where telling people you banned them tends to be problematic. Apart from those, we almost always post a comment in the thread saying that we banned the account.
I’d call that fraud. If you pay for a service you get to use the service.
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