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Great idea! Edit: Why does shadow banning feel like such an elegant solution? Everything has tradeoffs and I feel like shadow banning has tons of upside and ve

Great idea! Edit: Why does shadow banning feel like such an elegant solution? Everything has tradeoffs and I feel like shadow banning has tons of upside and very little downside. What am I missing?

keenmaster 6y ago
The only risk I can think of is that someone will upload the video and then livestream its playback on your platform with your branding using a separate livestreaming tool.
- kazinator 6y ago
  I.e. shadow banning semantically cannot work with a site that is geared toward publishing content, because the content is supposed to be visible to visitors who are not authenticated. If it isn't visible, that is painfully obvious. Shadow banning only works when only authenticated users can see any content at all; then we arrange for only the offender to see content they have created. This works as long as the offender doesn't create multiple accounts. (You need something slightly more clever, like allowing the content to be viewed from the same IP address as the last known address for that offender, plus some surrounding range (e.g. IPv4 class C subnet)).
lostlogin 6y ago
The only one I can think of is that accounts may have extremely objectionable content and it remains there. That could be a legal liability.
dredmorbius 6y ago
There are cases in which explicit and obvious moderation results in retaliation, including DDoS and hacking attacks. Various soft fail mechanisms, including shadowbanning, degraded performance, errors, authentication failures, etc., may help avoid this. The question is what adversarial model you're facing: is it some random pr0n / SEO / affiliate / fraudster, or is it a "nice website you gots heyah, be a shame if anyting happen' to it" squad? Former can be modded away. Latter takes nuance.
tinus_hn 6y ago
It’s kind of easy to check if your posts are visible for not logged in users so you aren’t fooling bots and spammers, just real people. And the bots don’t care about moderation drama but the real people do, no matter if the moderation is proper or not. It always looks really unfair.

Great idea! Edit: Why does shadow banning feel like such an elegant solution? Everything has tradeoffs and I feel like shadow banning has tons of upside and very little downside. What am I missing?

keenmaster 6y ago

The only risk I can think of is that someone will upload the video and then livestream its playback on your platform with your branding using a separate livestreaming tool.

kazinator 6y ago
I.e. shadow banning semantically cannot work with a site that is geared toward publishing content, because the content is supposed to be visible to visitors who are not authenticated. If it isn't visible, that is painfully obvious. Shadow banning only works when only authenticated users can see any content at all; then we arrange for only the offender to see content they have created. This works as long as the offender doesn't create multiple accounts. (You need something slightly more clever, like allowing the content to be viewed from the same IP address as the last known address for that offender, plus some surrounding range (e.g. IPv4 class C subnet)).

lostlogin 6y ago

The only one I can think of is that accounts may have extremely objectionable content and it remains there. That could be a legal liability.

dredmorbius 6y ago

There are cases in which explicit and obvious moderation results in retaliation, including DDoS and hacking attacks. Various soft fail mechanisms, including shadowbanning, degraded performance, errors, authentication failures, etc., may help avoid this. The question is what adversarial model you're facing: is it some random pr0n / SEO / affiliate / fraudster, or is it a "nice website you gots heyah, be a shame if anyting happen' to it" squad? Former can be modded away. Latter takes nuance.

tinus_hn 6y ago

It’s kind of easy to check if your posts are visible for not logged in users so you aren’t fooling bots and spammers, just real people. And the bots don’t care about moderation drama but the real people do, no matter if the moderation is proper or not. It always looks really unfair.