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Most people aren’t aware that shadowbanning occurs, how it is used, and to what extent. By very definition they don’t see shadowbanned comments or content. I’m

Most people aren’t aware that shadowbanning occurs, how it is used, and to what extent. By very definition they don’t see shadowbanned comments or content. I’m not sure how you can think people approve of something they aren’t even aware is happening. It’s not just deceptive to the shadowbanned user, it’s deceptive to the whole community, too. How can an average user trust that the content they’re viewing isn’t entirely astroturfed? Or alternatively, 100% organic?

kbenson 5y ago
> I’m not sure how you can think people approve of something they aren’t even aware is happening. Because people often trust people based on reputation, results, or other proxy measures rather than reviewing every action they take. > It’s not just deceptive to the shadowbanned user, it’s deceptive to the whole community, too. It is. At the same time I think most people don't care, and are fine not having every moderation action announced to them. Additionally, as I've stated multiple times here, and so have others, HN allows anyone to opt into seeing these comments from shadowbanned users, so HN doesn't even follow the same ideal of the problem case you and others are putting forth. You'll get a lot farther pushing this idea of shadowbanning being bad and a problem if you actually respond to the reality of the situation you're arguing about here, and the counter-arguments being put forth, rather than just blindly repeating the same thing. > How can an average user trust that the content they’re viewing isn’t entirely astroturfed? Or alternatively, 100% organic? How is that anything to do with shadowbanning or moderation? That's a problem entirely separate and that shadowbanning and moderation of the type we're discussing has nothing to do with. But, if you really want an asnwer to this ridiculous question, it's that you can go into your profile here, find the "showdead" option, turn it on, and then you'll see all the comments you're complaining are hidden and deceptive and hidden from all the users. And if you don't trust this is all the dead comments, you can't really trust the moderators at all (and there's no more or less trust than any other site which says they do or don't do something).
- MisterMower 5y ago
  For the record, I’m not talking about HN, I’m referring to Facebook and Reddit particularly. HN handles this issue better than many platforms. Apologies if that wasn’t clear. So users are okay with being deceived and ultimately don’t care? Let me know if I’ve misunderstood your argument. That may be true. And knowing human nature you may be right. I disagree that it’s a morally acceptable way to moderate a community or forum, though. People lose trust when they find they’ve been shadowbanned, or discover that the practice is used. They rightfully understand that the discourse is being manipulated in an underhanded, opaque way.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    > So users are okay with being deceived and ultimately don’t care? Let me know if I’ve misunderstood your argument. Users that expect moderation expect a certain level of housekeeping and don't care if they are exposed to it all, and I would guess a great many don't want to be bothered with it. The important distinction here is that being shadowbanned is being excluded from the community, and is done to even more effectively keep these people away from and out of the community than just regular banning would accomplish. The community expects to see content from the rest of the community, these people aren't part of that group, regardless of whether they still have an account and can log it, so the amount of deception to the community is little to none. The alternative to shadowbanning is not letting they people post, it's banning. The effective desired outcome in both cases is that this person no longer is allowed to be part of the community. The effective actual outcome is that regular banning often just results in people making a new account and continuing with the same behavior. The only deception of shadowbanning to the community is that you're not explicitly saying "hey, these posts we tried to stop from being made? We're letting them be made but just hiding them from view, since we don't want them here in the first place." If I'm going to get mad about that I might as well get mad at the police or a business owner for taking down some banner that was hung illegally across other businesses that I would see on my commute if they didn't act fast enough. Would I feel deceived that people had his some random message someone decided to put up that was unwanted was removed without me being able to see it? No. > I disagree that it’s a morally acceptable way to moderate a community or forum, though. If every forum was like that I might agree. But groups of people have the right to choose how to police themselves and there are plenty of other communities out there that do it differently. > People lose trust when they find they’ve been shadowbanned Those people are being kicked out. The community, or the mods, want them to lose trust and leave in most cases. I don't worry that someone I think deserves to be in jail is disillusioned because they don't think they deserve to be in jail. Or, if I worry about it, it's not in a way that makes me think they don't deserve the punishment. > or discover that the practice is used. I think that's very few people. > They rightfully understand that the discourse is being manipulated in an underhanded, opaque way. All moderation is this, whether done by the few with extra powers or outsourced to the crowd. Moderation is censorship. Censorship isn't always bad (like most things in like, it's a matter of extremes being the problem. Too little or too much both have issues, so we generally fluctuate as a society around a sort of middle area). You can call it underhanded and opaque all you want, but it's only that to those that have already been excised from the community. To everyone else, it's really no different than if that person was banned, except they're less likely to come back for a while.
- tekknik 5y ago
  You notice how all of your examples are about HN and not FB? Where’s the option on FB to turn on banned posts? Where’s the default option turned on on HN?
  - kbenson 5y ago
    That would be because A) this thread diverged from that when the assertion that all shadowbanning ain any forum is harmful to the community, and B) as noted elsewhere in this discussion, FB isn't shadowbanning, they're denying sends and a UI bug later is removing the information that the send failed. > Where’s the default option turned on on HN? I'm not sure what you're asking. If you're asking if showdead is on by default on HN, no, it's not, and I don't think it should be. The whole point is to make it so people that are not contributing usefully to, or worse are actively harmful to, the discussion and community are less likely to cause a disturbance. Any one of those people can easily tell if they are shadowbanned if they decide to check just by opening up an anonymous browsing instance and looking at the same discussion. They then have the option of either trying to contact the moderators to make a case, continuing on and trying to align better with the community in future comments and hope someone vouches for them (if they're aware of that), or making a new account and starting over. But, ultimately, even if they don't even know they're shadowbanned, as long as they try to align their behavior with the community, I think there's a good chance they're be vouched for enough to not be shadowbanned after a while. When that doesn't happen, from what I've seen it's because they haven't really made an effort to change. For example, a dead user fit2rule posted yesterday about how they've been dead for a few months. I looked at their comment history, and the vast majority of them are single line responses. Those aren't necessarily bad, but they probably don't cross a threshold to make people decide they contribute enough to vouch for them. At the same time, the occasional comment they have with more than a sentence that seems to try to actually engage often doesn't show as dead, as someone must have vouched for it because they though it was worth being expressed. If they had kept with that type of engagement, I think they would not be dead at this time.
    - tekknik 5y ago
      > the assertion that all shadowbanning How can you know this? The community is what it is as a result of the discourse that happens here. If you remove one person that discourse, and therefor the community, has changed. So shadowbanning being harmful is more of an opinion of whether all voices should be heard or not. > I'm not sure what you're asking. If you're asking if showdead is on by default on HN, no, it's not, and I don't think it should be. I know it’s not, and I think it should be. It’s quite easy these days to have a pop up say “want to see all of the conversation? turn off this setting” and guide the user to turn it off with an easy way to turn it on. In fact, ideally, this censoring would happen on the client configured by rules created by the owner. > as long as they try to align their behavior with the community You do realize that everybody aligning means everybody is the same right? What happened to diversity? (cue “some opinions don’t matter” statement)

kbenson 5y ago

> I’m not sure how you can think people approve of something they aren’t even aware is happening. Because people often trust people based on reputation, results, or other proxy measures rather than reviewing every action they take. > It’s not just deceptive to the shadowbanned user, it’s deceptive to the whole community, too. It is. At the same time I think most people don't care, and are fine not having every moderation action announced to them. Additionally, as I've stated multiple times here, and so have others, HN allows anyone to opt into seeing these comments from shadowbanned users, so HN doesn't even follow the same ideal of the problem case you and others are putting forth. You'll get a lot farther pushing this idea of shadowbanning being bad and a problem if you actually respond to the reality of the situation you're arguing about here, and the counter-arguments being put forth, rather than just blindly repeating the same thing. > How can an average user trust that the content they’re viewing isn’t entirely astroturfed? Or alternatively, 100% organic? How is that anything to do with shadowbanning or moderation? That's a problem entirely separate and that shadowbanning and moderation of the type we're discussing has nothing to do with. But, if you really want an asnwer to this ridiculous question, it's that you can go into your profile here, find the "showdead" option, turn it on, and then you'll see all the comments you're complaining are hidden and deceptive and hidden from all the users. And if you don't trust this is all the dead comments, you can't really trust the moderators at all (and there's no more or less trust than any other site which says they do or don't do something).

MisterMower 5y ago
For the record, I’m not talking about HN, I’m referring to Facebook and Reddit particularly. HN handles this issue better than many platforms. Apologies if that wasn’t clear. So users are okay with being deceived and ultimately don’t care? Let me know if I’ve misunderstood your argument. That may be true. And knowing human nature you may be right. I disagree that it’s a morally acceptable way to moderate a community or forum, though. People lose trust when they find they’ve been shadowbanned, or discover that the practice is used. They rightfully understand that the discourse is being manipulated in an underhanded, opaque way.
- kbenson 5y ago
  > So users are okay with being deceived and ultimately don’t care? Let me know if I’ve misunderstood your argument. Users that expect moderation expect a certain level of housekeeping and don't care if they are exposed to it all, and I would guess a great many don't want to be bothered with it. The important distinction here is that being shadowbanned is being excluded from the community, and is done to even more effectively keep these people away from and out of the community than just regular banning would accomplish. The community expects to see content from the rest of the community, these people aren't part of that group, regardless of whether they still have an account and can log it, so the amount of deception to the community is little to none. The alternative to shadowbanning is not letting they people post, it's banning. The effective desired outcome in both cases is that this person no longer is allowed to be part of the community. The effective actual outcome is that regular banning often just results in people making a new account and continuing with the same behavior. The only deception of shadowbanning to the community is that you're not explicitly saying "hey, these posts we tried to stop from being made? We're letting them be made but just hiding them from view, since we don't want them here in the first place." If I'm going to get mad about that I might as well get mad at the police or a business owner for taking down some banner that was hung illegally across other businesses that I would see on my commute if they didn't act fast enough. Would I feel deceived that people had his some random message someone decided to put up that was unwanted was removed without me being able to see it? No. > I disagree that it’s a morally acceptable way to moderate a community or forum, though. If every forum was like that I might agree. But groups of people have the right to choose how to police themselves and there are plenty of other communities out there that do it differently. > People lose trust when they find they’ve been shadowbanned Those people are being kicked out. The community, or the mods, want them to lose trust and leave in most cases. I don't worry that someone I think deserves to be in jail is disillusioned because they don't think they deserve to be in jail. Or, if I worry about it, it's not in a way that makes me think they don't deserve the punishment. > or discover that the practice is used. I think that's very few people. > They rightfully understand that the discourse is being manipulated in an underhanded, opaque way. All moderation is this, whether done by the few with extra powers or outsourced to the crowd. Moderation is censorship. Censorship isn't always bad (like most things in like, it's a matter of extremes being the problem. Too little or too much both have issues, so we generally fluctuate as a society around a sort of middle area). You can call it underhanded and opaque all you want, but it's only that to those that have already been excised from the community. To everyone else, it's really no different than if that person was banned, except they're less likely to come back for a while.
tekknik 5y ago
You notice how all of your examples are about HN and not FB? Where’s the option on FB to turn on banned posts? Where’s the default option turned on on HN?
- kbenson 5y ago
  That would be because A) this thread diverged from that when the assertion that all shadowbanning ain any forum is harmful to the community, and B) as noted elsewhere in this discussion, FB isn't shadowbanning, they're denying sends and a UI bug later is removing the information that the send failed. > Where’s the default option turned on on HN? I'm not sure what you're asking. If you're asking if showdead is on by default on HN, no, it's not, and I don't think it should be. The whole point is to make it so people that are not contributing usefully to, or worse are actively harmful to, the discussion and community are less likely to cause a disturbance. Any one of those people can easily tell if they are shadowbanned if they decide to check just by opening up an anonymous browsing instance and looking at the same discussion. They then have the option of either trying to contact the moderators to make a case, continuing on and trying to align better with the community in future comments and hope someone vouches for them (if they're aware of that), or making a new account and starting over. But, ultimately, even if they don't even know they're shadowbanned, as long as they try to align their behavior with the community, I think there's a good chance they're be vouched for enough to not be shadowbanned after a while. When that doesn't happen, from what I've seen it's because they haven't really made an effort to change. For example, a dead user fit2rule posted yesterday about how they've been dead for a few months. I looked at their comment history, and the vast majority of them are single line responses. Those aren't necessarily bad, but they probably don't cross a threshold to make people decide they contribute enough to vouch for them. At the same time, the occasional comment they have with more than a sentence that seems to try to actually engage often doesn't show as dead, as someone must have vouched for it because they though it was worth being expressed. If they had kept with that type of engagement, I think they would not be dead at this time.
  - tekknik 5y ago
    > the assertion that all shadowbanning How can you know this? The community is what it is as a result of the discourse that happens here. If you remove one person that discourse, and therefor the community, has changed. So shadowbanning being harmful is more of an opinion of whether all voices should be heard or not. > I'm not sure what you're asking. If you're asking if showdead is on by default on HN, no, it's not, and I don't think it should be. I know it’s not, and I think it should be. It’s quite easy these days to have a pop up say “want to see all of the conversation? turn off this setting” and guide the user to turn it off with an easy way to turn it on. In fact, ideally, this censoring would happen on the client configured by rules created by the owner. > as long as they try to align their behavior with the community You do realize that everybody aligning means everybody is the same right? What happened to diversity? (cue “some opinions don’t matter” statement)