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> It's one thing to censor !!! Are we nonchalantly accepting its OK to censor and moving on to the argument about deceiving users? Edit: should add more cont

> It's one thing to censor !!! Are we nonchalantly accepting its OK to censor and moving on to the argument about deceiving users? Edit: should add more context to this. I don't think we should be casually OK with censorship. Next thing you know, FB will silently(or not) start censoring political opponents, activists they don't like, etc. I am quite unsettled by how the west is doing the same as China. Censorship is just casually taken as granted now. I don't think counter arguments hold for "private platforms". At some point, it becomes public square when a billion+ people use your platform.

rnd0 5y ago
>Are we nonchalantly accepting its OK to censor and moving on to the argument about deceiving users? Personally I'm disturbed at the non-chalant attitude taken towards shadow moderation in this thread. Shadow banning and shadow moderation may make one's job easier but it has a disastrous effect on the forum or community by injecting a definite level of deceit into the moderator/poster relationship. Any forum where shadow bans /shadow moderation are practiced the moderators by definition can not be trusted.
- bopbeepboop 5y ago
  On HN, shadowbans are implemented via automatic flagging.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  I've got bad news for you about HackerNews then, HN has 'dead' users who can post but are only shown if you specifically opt-in and they can't be replied to at all.
  - rnd0 5y ago
    I'm not even remotely surprised, and that doesn't really change my point.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    But those comments from dead useres can be "vouched" for if they appear to be in good faith, and one or more of those seems to take people out of dead status, I think. I'm not sure what points threshold grants that ability, or how long it has existed, but I do it every few month or so when I see a comment that seems to be perfectly fine but the comment is dead. I think that might be a pretty good mechanism, all said and done. Someone acts in a way the community doesn't accept enough times they go dead, and then if they act acceptably they start getting people responding and participating to them as they come out of dead status. They only get attention, and positive attention, from acting responsibly.
    - seattle_spring 5y ago
      HN would be a useless trove of violence and hate if all [dead] comments were automatically unhid. Folks who are into 8chan might be into a community like that, but I personally much prefer the moderated approach taken today.
      - jjav 5y ago
        > HN would be a useless trove of violence and hate if all [dead] comments were automatically unhid. I read with showdead=yes and it is nowhere near that description. In fact dead posts are not even that common on most articles. And most of the dead posts, while on average low quality, are very rarely hateful or anything like that.
        bagels 5y ago
        There used to be one dead user that would post... wild racist stuff due to mental illness. But lately yes, I agree with this characterization.
        chalst 5y ago
        I read with showdead=yes as well and can vouch for your experience. You are not contradicting the parent post, IIUC, however: I take it seattle_spring was talking about how HN would be if it lacked the system or something like it at all.
- kbenson 5y ago
  > Shadow banning and shadow moderation may make one's job easier but it has a disastrous effect on the forum or community by injecting a definite level of deceit into the moderator/poster relationship. You say that as if it's fact, but I'm not sure it is. HN has a method of shadow banning that is reversible if you are noticed as posting stuff that contributes and follows the guidelines, and even when you are shadow banned, people can opt into seeing your contributions (I've had showdead on from day one, I think). There are places in the internet you can go to make sure you are heard and you can say whatever you want. 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.
  - rnd0 5y ago
    >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.
- faeriechangling 5y ago
  Shadow moderation became the norm ages ago to deal with spam. You can debate about its limits but somebody with a hardline position smacks of somebody who has never dealed with the real world issues but is cocksure about how things should be done.
  - rnd0 5y ago
    >You can debate about its limits but somebody with a hardline position smacks of somebody who has never dealed with the real world issues but is cocksure about how things should be done. The canard about what happens when you assume applies in this case. Very much so. I've moderated forums and I've never had a problem with simply deleting spam out-right when it came up. Same with problematic users and posts.
    - faeriechangling 5y ago
      I'd maybe do that for the manual spamming but it's foolhardy against anything machine generated. You're just helping people who couldn't care less about anything but increasing clicks understand how they get detected.
      - rnd0 5y ago
        >I'd maybe do that for the manual spamming but it's foolhardy against anything machine generated. You're just helping people who couldn't care less about anything but increasing clicks understand how they get detected. I haven't had to deal with it recently (since 2015 or so) but at the time captchas seemed to help with the automated stuff and what slipped through we deleted by hand. Times change, of course, so I see your point
    - yuliyp 5y ago
      It's one thing to moderate something in the hundreds to thousands of users, and something entirely different in the tens of millions. When you start having multiple groups of attackers and whole underground markets aimed at taking advantage of your users, simply banning individuals / deleting individual posts no longer cuts it.
- wvenable 5y ago
  The assumption that you are making that all the users, and specifically the users that need to be shadow banned, are just normal mentally healthy individuals. Mostly, they are not. If you want to waste precious minutes of your life dealing with the mentally deranged for free -- that's your call. But you shouldn't be disturbed by those who don't.
analognoise 5y ago
It's not a public square for being successful, don't use Facebook if you don't like it. I don't either.
bobthechef 5y ago
It will happen in the US. BigTech is a reaction to the internet. The ruling oligarchy lost control of the narrative. They need to control information flow again.
otterley 5y ago
Our legal system (fortunately) hasn’t accepted the theory that the penalty for being popular is that you get to be nationalized. How would you feel if you threw a lot of parties in your house, and then one day the government came to you and said you now have to allow everyone to party at your house?
- romwell 5y ago
  Why does it matter? You can't argue by an analogy, because first you need need to argue why running a social network with 1B+ users is the same thing as throwing a house party. With great power comes great responsibility. You don't get to be "popular" for free. And if you don't like it — you don't have to pay that game.
  - otterley 5y ago
    > You can't argue by an analogy Sure I can. I’m doing it right now. Of course, analogies are imperfect, but they make good teaching and argumentative tools. > You don't get to be "popular" for free. Fortunately for society, the law disagrees with you. (Also, your way has been tried in the past, and was not especially popular - to the point of revolution in certain Eastern European countries in the 1960s-1980s.)
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  You're making an interesting point which I resonate with - but I want to elaborate and crystalize my thoughts a bit more. I am a staunch supporter of civil rights and we should examine the extremes. Extrema 1: Social network with everyone on the planet addicted to it, it becomes impossible to avoid. Even if one doesn't want to use it, it will become a necessity to communicate to others. Twitter is an example where it is official source of information from Government agencies to local fire department, embassies, and many politicians, etc. Recently they're requiring an account (and phone number) to access what seems to be the official channels of information for many nations. With milions if not billions of users, it is a significant chunk of the entire world's population. Just like any other industry (big oil, big tobacco), big social media and big tech need to be regulated. There is a spectrum between a private forum of 10k users and a megacorp able to control election outcomes even. What's even more eggregious is that the algorithms that govern the engagement of 1B+ users is developed by people of Silicon Valley (probably 0.000001% of US population or around ~300 people give or take). In private. Closed doors. We oughta see how this is terrifying (even if I agree with their stance and moral principles). Extrema 2: Big tech merges with Gov in the business of law enforcement. A small party where government has absolutely no business gets interrupted by cops who were alerted by the "thought algorithms". These thought algorithms were developed by Gov + Big Tech by fusing various channels of information and it was deemed that this party is too pick-your-fav-niche-topic and cannot be tolerated. It is my business, my party, my friends and my agenda. No one should have the right to interrupt unless I am violating laws and I am granted due process. Obviously both extremes are encroaching civil rights of people to have privacy and access to information.
guerrilla 5y ago
> Next thing you know, FB will silently(or not) start censoring political opponents, activists they don't like, etc They already do. [1] 1. https://crimethinc.com/2020/08/19/on-facebook-banning-pages-that-support-crimethinccom-and-the-digital-censorship-to-come https://crimethinc.com/2020/08/19/on-facebook-banning-pages-...
mnd999 5y ago
Is there any better idea for how to stop people deliberately harming each other with bad information? Particularly in light of confirmation bias and the level of effort required to disprove vs the amount of effort required to make stuff up.

rnd0 5y ago

>Are we nonchalantly accepting its OK to censor and moving on to the argument about deceiving users? Personally I'm disturbed at the non-chalant attitude taken towards shadow moderation in this thread. Shadow banning and shadow moderation may make one's job easier but it has a disastrous effect on the forum or community by injecting a definite level of deceit into the moderator/poster relationship. Any forum where shadow bans /shadow moderation are practiced the moderators by definition can not be trusted.

bopbeepboop 5y ago
On HN, shadowbans are implemented via automatic flagging.
rtkwe 5y ago
I've got bad news for you about HackerNews then, HN has 'dead' users who can post but are only shown if you specifically opt-in and they can't be replied to at all.
- rnd0 5y ago
  I'm not even remotely surprised, and that doesn't really change my point.
- kbenson 5y ago
  But those comments from dead useres can be "vouched" for if they appear to be in good faith, and one or more of those seems to take people out of dead status, I think. I'm not sure what points threshold grants that ability, or how long it has existed, but I do it every few month or so when I see a comment that seems to be perfectly fine but the comment is dead. I think that might be a pretty good mechanism, all said and done. Someone acts in a way the community doesn't accept enough times they go dead, and then if they act acceptably they start getting people responding and participating to them as they come out of dead status. They only get attention, and positive attention, from acting responsibly.
  - seattle_spring 5y ago
    HN would be a useless trove of violence and hate if all [dead] comments were automatically unhid. Folks who are into 8chan might be into a community like that, but I personally much prefer the moderated approach taken today.
    - jjav 5y ago
      > HN would be a useless trove of violence and hate if all [dead] comments were automatically unhid. I read with showdead=yes and it is nowhere near that description. In fact dead posts are not even that common on most articles. And most of the dead posts, while on average low quality, are very rarely hateful or anything like that.
      - bagels 5y ago
        There used to be one dead user that would post... wild racist stuff due to mental illness. But lately yes, I agree with this characterization.
      - chalst 5y ago
        I read with showdead=yes as well and can vouch for your experience. You are not contradicting the parent post, IIUC, however: I take it seattle_spring was talking about how HN would be if it lacked the system or something like it at all.
kbenson 5y ago
> Shadow banning and shadow moderation may make one's job easier but it has a disastrous effect on the forum or community by injecting a definite level of deceit into the moderator/poster relationship. You say that as if it's fact, but I'm not sure it is. HN has a method of shadow banning that is reversible if you are noticed as posting stuff that contributes and follows the guidelines, and even when you are shadow banned, people can opt into seeing your contributions (I've had showdead on from day one, I think). There are places in the internet you can go to make sure you are heard and you can say whatever you want. 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.
- rnd0 5y ago
  >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.
faeriechangling 5y ago
Shadow moderation became the norm ages ago to deal with spam. You can debate about its limits but somebody with a hardline position smacks of somebody who has never dealed with the real world issues but is cocksure about how things should be done.
- rnd0 5y ago
  >You can debate about its limits but somebody with a hardline position smacks of somebody who has never dealed with the real world issues but is cocksure about how things should be done. The canard about what happens when you assume applies in this case. Very much so. I've moderated forums and I've never had a problem with simply deleting spam out-right when it came up. Same with problematic users and posts.
  - faeriechangling 5y ago
    I'd maybe do that for the manual spamming but it's foolhardy against anything machine generated. You're just helping people who couldn't care less about anything but increasing clicks understand how they get detected.
    - rnd0 5y ago
      >I'd maybe do that for the manual spamming but it's foolhardy against anything machine generated. You're just helping people who couldn't care less about anything but increasing clicks understand how they get detected. I haven't had to deal with it recently (since 2015 or so) but at the time captchas seemed to help with the automated stuff and what slipped through we deleted by hand. Times change, of course, so I see your point
  - yuliyp 5y ago
    It's one thing to moderate something in the hundreds to thousands of users, and something entirely different in the tens of millions. When you start having multiple groups of attackers and whole underground markets aimed at taking advantage of your users, simply banning individuals / deleting individual posts no longer cuts it.
wvenable 5y ago
The assumption that you are making that all the users, and specifically the users that need to be shadow banned, are just normal mentally healthy individuals. Mostly, they are not. If you want to waste precious minutes of your life dealing with the mentally deranged for free -- that's your call. But you shouldn't be disturbed by those who don't.

analognoise 5y ago

It's not a public square for being successful, don't use Facebook if you don't like it. I don't either.

bobthechef 5y ago

It will happen in the US. BigTech is a reaction to the internet. The ruling oligarchy lost control of the narrative. They need to control information flow again.

otterley 5y ago

Our legal system (fortunately) hasn’t accepted the theory that the penalty for being popular is that you get to be nationalized. How would you feel if you threw a lot of parties in your house, and then one day the government came to you and said you now have to allow everyone to party at your house?

romwell 5y ago
Why does it matter? You can't argue by an analogy, because first you need need to argue why running a social network with 1B+ users is the same thing as throwing a house party. With great power comes great responsibility. You don't get to be "popular" for free. And if you don't like it — you don't have to pay that game.
- otterley 5y ago
  > You can't argue by an analogy Sure I can. I’m doing it right now. Of course, analogies are imperfect, but they make good teaching and argumentative tools. > You don't get to be "popular" for free. Fortunately for society, the law disagrees with you. (Also, your way has been tried in the past, and was not especially popular - to the point of revolution in certain Eastern European countries in the 1960s-1980s.)
systemvoltage 5y ago
You're making an interesting point which I resonate with - but I want to elaborate and crystalize my thoughts a bit more. I am a staunch supporter of civil rights and we should examine the extremes. Extrema 1: Social network with everyone on the planet addicted to it, it becomes impossible to avoid. Even if one doesn't want to use it, it will become a necessity to communicate to others. Twitter is an example where it is official source of information from Government agencies to local fire department, embassies, and many politicians, etc. Recently they're requiring an account (and phone number) to access what seems to be the official channels of information for many nations. With milions if not billions of users, it is a significant chunk of the entire world's population. Just like any other industry (big oil, big tobacco), big social media and big tech need to be regulated. There is a spectrum between a private forum of 10k users and a megacorp able to control election outcomes even. What's even more eggregious is that the algorithms that govern the engagement of 1B+ users is developed by people of Silicon Valley (probably 0.000001% of US population or around ~300 people give or take). In private. Closed doors. We oughta see how this is terrifying (even if I agree with their stance and moral principles). Extrema 2: Big tech merges with Gov in the business of law enforcement. A small party where government has absolutely no business gets interrupted by cops who were alerted by the "thought algorithms". These thought algorithms were developed by Gov + Big Tech by fusing various channels of information and it was deemed that this party is too pick-your-fav-niche-topic and cannot be tolerated. It is my business, my party, my friends and my agenda. No one should have the right to interrupt unless I am violating laws and I am granted due process. Obviously both extremes are encroaching civil rights of people to have privacy and access to information.

guerrilla 5y ago

> Next thing you know, FB will silently(or not) start censoring political opponents, activists they don't like, etc They already do. [1] 1. https://crimethinc.com/2020/08/19/on-facebook-banning-pages-that-support-crimethinccom-and-the-digital-censorship-to-come https://crimethinc.com/2020/08/19/on-facebook-banning-pages-...

mnd999 5y ago

Is there any better idea for how to stop people deliberately harming each other with bad information? Particularly in light of confirmation bias and the level of effort required to disprove vs the amount of effort required to make stuff up.