7 ms·

>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

by 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.

shadowgovt 5y ago
I think more precisely, the nature of the deceit is this: Shadowbans lie to a specific individual about their participation in the community. This is because the user is not considered part of the community. A shadowban is something you deploy against a user that is presumed to be a malicious actor in the system. It's deceit, but in a similar category of deceit to telling a user the resource is 404 not found instead of 403 or 401 because you don't even trust them enough to let them know that they found a resource that exists. It's deceit with the purpose of stymiing further malicious action.
- rapnie 5y ago
  > It's deceit, but in a similar category of deceit to telling a user the resource is 404 not found instead of 403 or 401 because you don't even trust them enough Is it the same? Showing a 404 is a security measure that applies equally to anyone lacking sufficient privileges. Ideally an app should prevent you from getting these, or show a message like "Not found, or no access". > It's deceit with the purpose of stymiing further malicious action. Shadowbans are powerful moderation weapons. Too much so, I'd say. The moderator is both prosecutor, judge and executioner. Who is the lawyer? Who revises after a time if the shadowbanned person has redeemed themself? Maybe their bad behavior was just a temporary fit, or even a mental breakdown they have since recovered from. Or they just become wiser grown-ups over time. All very human things that happen, but now they have a harsh sentence applied to them, and they may not even know about it. Especially at scale these things should be handled properly. And importantly there should be transparency of how the procedures work, what the status is, and what one can do about it. I also wonder to what degree on the big social platforms there exist even more subtle measures than all-out shadowbans. Like setting metrics on a sliding scale to define the extent the AI should limit a person's influence on the network. Maybe this already has a name, but let's call it "shadow suppression". With such measures in place a person's voice can be dimimished for a lifetime without them ever knowing. They get a Like or a Comment here and there, but they will never go viral or even reach the audience that they think they address, and no matter how good their content and behavior becomes.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
bagels 5y ago
Some users are simply not valuable participants. The kind that get shadowbanned can include those spamming Viagra, scams, and other nonsense. I think that not getting rid of that content/malicious participants (not community members) undermines faith in moderation.
- MisterMower 5y ago
  Other nonsense? As in viewpoints that are disagreeable to the moderators in charge? There’s a clear difference between male enhancement spam and a guy with a poorly thought out comment that most people find disagreeable. A middle schooler can spot the difference. Back in my day we welcomed those poorly reasoned or flat out wrong comments: you would attack them with logic and use them as opportunities to find the truth of a matter. And the community reading it would revise their priors and the needle would move closer to the truth. Today those comments get censored, leading to much of the awful discourse you see on FB and Reddit these days. You can’t discuss sacred cows without getting banned from a community or shadowbanned altogether. The ridiculous rhetoric on the left these days is a direct result if this phenomenon.
  - bagels 5y ago
    No, just the kind of stuff that our customers didn't want, or that were illegal. Pirated movies, scams that purported to offer pirated movies, people trying to steal passwords, people trying to hack our users. I think your accusations are aimed at the wrong person.
    - tekknik 5y ago
      Read the parents, this isn’t about your specific situation. You defended censoring, saying sometime it’s useful to essentially protect others from what you view as nonsense. This is the problem. What is “other nonsense” and how much of the moderators bias is in it? If someone is posting information, leave it alone. If it’s wrong it’ll be dealt with in short order by someone refuting it with more information. If it’s a spam account just posting marketing links then ban it. These users were not posting marketing links in their private messages.
kbenson 5y ago
> How is it not? Shadowbans by definition are deceptive The question is not whether it's deceptive, but whether "it has a disastrous effect on the forum or community". It is deceptive. Does it have a disastrous effect on the community? It doesn't appear so to me, so I think that needs supporting evidence. > 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. How a sentence is interpreted has a lot to do with the context the person reading it is in. I didn't intend to be dismissive, but I think the point still stands, because I was actually trying to make a point. Why not just use one of the sites that doesn't do shadowbanning or censorship instead? This isn't some sly insinuation you should leave. It's an actual question about what is different here from there in the rules and moderation, and how and why that might contribute to how the community acts at each place respectively. > 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. No, it's a real question that you decided wasn't relevant so then went out of your way to avoid. > 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. It hasn't been shown to be a fact. You haven't even really shown how it could be negative to the community, much less provided evidence. "It erodes faith" is both unsubstantiated, and it's also not shown even if it was how that actually results in a problem (I'm not sure there don't exist forums with hated moderators that still function fairly well). Shadowbanning is censorship and it is deceitful, but it's also aimed squarely at those the moderators think are not part of the community, or at least not productive parts. The whole point of it is to keep those people from realizing their account is banned right away and starting a new account to continue the behavior. I would argue that for the most part, this has a positive effect. There are plenty of dead posts which you can see too if you want which provide little or no useful contribution to the discussion or the community. > shadowbans undermine posters' faith in moderators and serve to undermine the credibility of moderation as a whole. I haven't observed that. I think most people here trust the moderators to use that sparingly, and there's also a system which appears to let the community see and reverse shadowbans in the case it's incorrectly applied or the banned person in question provides more meaningful content later.
- 5y ago

by rnd0 5y ago

shadowgovt 5y ago

I think more precisely, the nature of the deceit is this: Shadowbans lie to a specific individual about their participation in the community. This is because the user is not considered part of the community. A shadowban is something you deploy against a user that is presumed to be a malicious actor in the system. It's deceit, but in a similar category of deceit to telling a user the resource is 404 not found instead of 403 or 401 because you don't even trust them enough to let them know that they found a resource that exists. It's deceit with the purpose of stymiing further malicious action.

rapnie 5y ago
> It's deceit, but in a similar category of deceit to telling a user the resource is 404 not found instead of 403 or 401 because you don't even trust them enough Is it the same? Showing a 404 is a security measure that applies equally to anyone lacking sufficient privileges. Ideally an app should prevent you from getting these, or show a message like "Not found, or no access". > It's deceit with the purpose of stymiing further malicious action. Shadowbans are powerful moderation weapons. Too much so, I'd say. The moderator is both prosecutor, judge and executioner. Who is the lawyer? Who revises after a time if the shadowbanned person has redeemed themself? Maybe their bad behavior was just a temporary fit, or even a mental breakdown they have since recovered from. Or they just become wiser grown-ups over time. All very human things that happen, but now they have a harsh sentence applied to them, and they may not even know about it. Especially at scale these things should be handled properly. And importantly there should be transparency of how the procedures work, what the status is, and what one can do about it. I also wonder to what degree on the big social platforms there exist even more subtle measures than all-out shadowbans. Like setting metrics on a sliding scale to define the extent the AI should limit a person's influence on the network. Maybe this already has a name, but let's call it "shadow suppression". With such measures in place a person's voice can be dimimished for a lifetime without them ever knowing. They get a Like or a Comment here and there, but they will never go viral or even reach the audience that they think they address, and no matter how good their content and behavior becomes.
- shadowgovt 5y ago

bagels 5y ago

Some users are simply not valuable participants. The kind that get shadowbanned can include those spamming Viagra, scams, and other nonsense. I think that not getting rid of that content/malicious participants (not community members) undermines faith in moderation.

MisterMower 5y ago
Other nonsense? As in viewpoints that are disagreeable to the moderators in charge? There’s a clear difference between male enhancement spam and a guy with a poorly thought out comment that most people find disagreeable. A middle schooler can spot the difference. Back in my day we welcomed those poorly reasoned or flat out wrong comments: you would attack them with logic and use them as opportunities to find the truth of a matter. And the community reading it would revise their priors and the needle would move closer to the truth. Today those comments get censored, leading to much of the awful discourse you see on FB and Reddit these days. You can’t discuss sacred cows without getting banned from a community or shadowbanned altogether. The ridiculous rhetoric on the left these days is a direct result if this phenomenon.
- bagels 5y ago
  No, just the kind of stuff that our customers didn't want, or that were illegal. Pirated movies, scams that purported to offer pirated movies, people trying to steal passwords, people trying to hack our users. I think your accusations are aimed at the wrong person.
  - tekknik 5y ago
    Read the parents, this isn’t about your specific situation. You defended censoring, saying sometime it’s useful to essentially protect others from what you view as nonsense. This is the problem. What is “other nonsense” and how much of the moderators bias is in it? If someone is posting information, leave it alone. If it’s wrong it’ll be dealt with in short order by someone refuting it with more information. If it’s a spam account just posting marketing links then ban it. These users were not posting marketing links in their private messages.

kbenson 5y ago

> How is it not? Shadowbans by definition are deceptive The question is not whether it's deceptive, but whether "it has a disastrous effect on the forum or community". It is deceptive. Does it have a disastrous effect on the community? It doesn't appear so to me, so I think that needs supporting evidence. > 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. How a sentence is interpreted has a lot to do with the context the person reading it is in. I didn't intend to be dismissive, but I think the point still stands, because I was actually trying to make a point. Why not just use one of the sites that doesn't do shadowbanning or censorship instead? This isn't some sly insinuation you should leave. It's an actual question about what is different here from there in the rules and moderation, and how and why that might contribute to how the community acts at each place respectively. > 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. No, it's a real question that you decided wasn't relevant so then went out of your way to avoid. > 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. It hasn't been shown to be a fact. You haven't even really shown how it could be negative to the community, much less provided evidence. "It erodes faith" is both unsubstantiated, and it's also not shown even if it was how that actually results in a problem (I'm not sure there don't exist forums with hated moderators that still function fairly well). Shadowbanning is censorship and it is deceitful, but it's also aimed squarely at those the moderators think are not part of the community, or at least not productive parts. The whole point of it is to keep those people from realizing their account is banned right away and starting a new account to continue the behavior. I would argue that for the most part, this has a positive effect. There are plenty of dead posts which you can see too if you want which provide little or no useful contribution to the discussion or the community. > shadowbans undermine posters' faith in moderators and serve to undermine the credibility of moderation as a whole. I haven't observed that. I think most people here trust the moderators to use that sparingly, and there's also a system which appears to let the community see and reverse shadowbans in the case it's incorrectly applied or the banned person in question provides more meaningful content later.

5y ago