17 ms·

>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

by 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
        The question is are they few and not quite as bad because the shadowbanning, or in spite of it. Those comments can't be responded to without vouching for them, and I doubt most people are going to vouch for them just to respond, unless the comment has some merit. How many people just stop commenting because they are getting no interaction? how many additional posts are prevented because people can't respond to those comments? Like many policies that might actually have an effect, I'm hesitant to say exactly how much it achieves without data comparing what it's like without it.
  - emikulic 5y ago
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.

by rnd0 5y ago

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
      The question is are they few and not quite as bad because the shadowbanning, or in spite of it. Those comments can't be responded to without vouching for them, and I doubt most people are going to vouch for them just to respond, unless the comment has some merit. How many people just stop commenting because they are getting no interaction? how many additional posts are prevented because people can't respond to those comments? Like many policies that might actually have an effect, I'm hesitant to say exactly how much it achieves without data comparing what it's like without it.
- emikulic 5y ago

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.