4 ms·

In all honesty, the Shadowban was the worst thing they ever did... I've had 3 accounts, 1 of which has been stuck at sub 130 users for over 10 years of posting

In all honesty, the Shadowban was the worst thing they ever did... I've had 3 accounts, 1 of which has been stuck at sub 130 users for over 10 years of posting, no matter what I've tried. That would be f*ing impossible on any platform that truly fosters creativity and even a scrap of post equality/fairness. There is also absolutely no indication nor procedure for contesting a limited status placed on social accounts on platforms like Twitter, it's all done in secret, which adds insult to injury. Truth is, the minute you mention anything now that is remotely perceived as critical of a platform on the platform, a switch is flipped that prevents you from building anything positive within that community. Tech sufferers greatly from a "God Complex" syndrome, and it's exactly what will prevent it from getting better. Even the largest social platforms are not insulated from bad leadership being accountable, and frankly, that's the reason why things really die a slow death these days. Since I decided to just bolster my own site, I get reliable growth, and metrics... Focusing on my own site is a lot less stressful than relying on the gaslighting and unexplained "growth-hobbling" that is now far too typical on social sites...

huijzer 5y ago
> Since I decided to just bolster my own site, I get reliable growth, and metrics... Since you don’t have social media anymore (or at least Twitter), how do you get new traffic to your site? All via search engines?
- winternett 5y ago
  I still have those old social media accounts, now they serve to drive content to my site (the primary focal point of content I create) though... I make full music videos for my site, and then cut smaller snippets of it to post as I can on social sites, which makes my life a lot easier.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  I wonder what fraction of traffic these days is from nor search engines, neither social media ?
baryphonic 5y ago
> Tech sufferers greatly from a "God Complex" syndrome, and it's exactly what will prevent it from getting better. Even the largest social platforms are not insulated from bad leadership being accountable, and frankly, that's the reason why things really die a slow death these days. I think I know what you mean, though I typically frame it almost like they have an Anti-god problem. Big tech leaders are often explicitly trying to avoid passing moral or ethical judgment, so instead rely on "data" or "numbers." What a lot of the "I-follow-data" cultists seem not to realize is that "data" is basically inherently meaningless per se, thus decision-making based on data alone builds interpretive value judgments into the decision rule being used. It also invites fanatics to start producing manipulated/biased/tendentious "data" that appears to be some impartial metric, but is in fact just veiled motivated reasoning exploited to drive an agenda. Facebook and Google appear to have followed this to its logical extent, allowing literal algorithms to make decisions "based on data." So has Twitter, though Twitter's system is probably even more dysfunctional. At least when God damns you, you can argue your case and be presented with the evidence and know who to complain to. Tech damnation involves receiving a vaguely-worded message about polices or "community guidelines" being violated (per some unknown interpretation), or no reason at all. You have no recourse or chance to argue your case, even though many times the damnation was an error.
- drewcoo 5y ago
  I have ample evidence of tech companies passing judgement and punishing people for things I often can't even understand. Despite the rumors, so far I have not seen or even heard of any evidence of a god doing that. Maybe gods need to get a "Tech Complex."
  - baryphonic 5y ago
    Why does "justice" as a concept exist? How did it evolve? Where is the advantage in it? After all, in non-human species, the runt of the litter tends to die. I have ample evidence that all humans are deeply concerned with this concept, however different their conceptions may be; yet I have seen or heard no evidence that could plausibly explain why it helped sustain us as a species.
caslon 5y ago
Have you considered that people might just not find you particularly interesting?
- winternett 5y ago
  Nope.
josephg 5y ago
> Tech sufferers greatly from a "God Complex" syndrome, and it's exactly what will prevent it from getting better. I saw an excellent critique of Roblox the other day, which covered many aspects of their business and different kinds of abuse which are happening in and around their game. The most bizarre part was that they sent some questions to the company - and the company responded by saying they “clearly weren’t being objective” and essentially gaslighting the people making the video. I think the people in charge of Roblox seriously don’t see themselves as holding any sort of responsibility to the broader society that pays their bills. It’s like someone watched The Corporation and thought - “oh companies can get away with sociopathic behaviour? I want in!”. Doing harm to the world in the name of your bottom line doesn’t make you clever. It makes you the villain. (Video in question: https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY )
- mattgreenrocks 5y ago
  What's weird is no one really notices/cares about this type of behavior. I sometimes wonder if this is seen as a feature: institutional sociopathy shields powerful sociopathic people from their consequences. A few possibilities: * people generally cannot discern moral realities within complex systems, instead preferring simpler narratives ("he made a lot of money, he must be a decent chap") * people can see it on occasion, but insist that the problem is the single bad actor rather than the system enabling them * people realize they can't do much about it, as they're implicitly bound up in this system run amok
  - josephg 5y ago
    Yeah I’m puzzled why people don’t seem to care too. I think it’s mostly the third - complaining about companies acting malevolently is boring like climate change. Most people would rather not think about it. At the companies themselves, I blame the C suite entirely. It’s a leadership problem. What is the vision for your company? Why do we all get out of bed in the morning? If the goal is to make the world better, then concerns about how your business is impacting the world would matter. But having a goal to simply to enrich the founders (which seems to be the case with most tech companies), is like making an entire car just so you can drive to the gas station. Companies like Twitter and Roblox change the world by their very presence. It’s shameful to waste that capacity by not making the world better in the process.
14 5y ago
I question whether reddit has shadow banned one of my accounts. I post regularly to both and one has about 10k karma and the other seems stuck at 2k. I do get the occasional like but never anything substantial and it makes me wonder if they are severely limiting how many people see my posts. I could just be imagining it but with the thought of shadow band it had me wondering. I couldn’t remember my password so on a separate computer I made a new account and hope to stay logged in on the first one so I don’t lose it is why I am using 2 accounts.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  YouTube can shadowban your comments just because you used (more than one ?) timestamp "links" for the same video !
- throwaway21_ 5y ago
  Everybody is doing that. Even here on the HN you'll get shadow banned - couple of weeks ago whole thread that someone else started just disappeared. I become aware of that only when searching for my own message from that thread. It was semi-controversial issue but nothing in that thread (at least at the time I saw its content for the last time) warranted that. Basically what I'm seeing as a HN is just a view that someone else curates.

huijzer 5y ago

> Since I decided to just bolster my own site, I get reliable growth, and metrics... Since you don’t have social media anymore (or at least Twitter), how do you get new traffic to your site? All via search engines?

winternett 5y ago
I still have those old social media accounts, now they serve to drive content to my site (the primary focal point of content I create) though... I make full music videos for my site, and then cut smaller snippets of it to post as I can on social sites, which makes my life a lot easier.
BlueTemplar 5y ago
I wonder what fraction of traffic these days is from nor search engines, neither social media ?

baryphonic 5y ago

> Tech sufferers greatly from a "God Complex" syndrome, and it's exactly what will prevent it from getting better. Even the largest social platforms are not insulated from bad leadership being accountable, and frankly, that's the reason why things really die a slow death these days. I think I know what you mean, though I typically frame it almost like they have an Anti-god problem. Big tech leaders are often explicitly trying to avoid passing moral or ethical judgment, so instead rely on "data" or "numbers." What a lot of the "I-follow-data" cultists seem not to realize is that "data" is basically inherently meaningless per se, thus decision-making based on data alone builds interpretive value judgments into the decision rule being used. It also invites fanatics to start producing manipulated/biased/tendentious "data" that appears to be some impartial metric, but is in fact just veiled motivated reasoning exploited to drive an agenda. Facebook and Google appear to have followed this to its logical extent, allowing literal algorithms to make decisions "based on data." So has Twitter, though Twitter's system is probably even more dysfunctional. At least when God damns you, you can argue your case and be presented with the evidence and know who to complain to. Tech damnation involves receiving a vaguely-worded message about polices or "community guidelines" being violated (per some unknown interpretation), or no reason at all. You have no recourse or chance to argue your case, even though many times the damnation was an error.

drewcoo 5y ago
I have ample evidence of tech companies passing judgement and punishing people for things I often can't even understand. Despite the rumors, so far I have not seen or even heard of any evidence of a god doing that. Maybe gods need to get a "Tech Complex."
- baryphonic 5y ago
  Why does "justice" as a concept exist? How did it evolve? Where is the advantage in it? After all, in non-human species, the runt of the litter tends to die. I have ample evidence that all humans are deeply concerned with this concept, however different their conceptions may be; yet I have seen or heard no evidence that could plausibly explain why it helped sustain us as a species.

caslon 5y ago

Have you considered that people might just not find you particularly interesting?

winternett 5y ago
Nope.

josephg 5y ago

> Tech sufferers greatly from a "God Complex" syndrome, and it's exactly what will prevent it from getting better. I saw an excellent critique of Roblox the other day, which covered many aspects of their business and different kinds of abuse which are happening in and around their game. The most bizarre part was that they sent some questions to the company - and the company responded by saying they “clearly weren’t being objective” and essentially gaslighting the people making the video. I think the people in charge of Roblox seriously don’t see themselves as holding any sort of responsibility to the broader society that pays their bills. It’s like someone watched The Corporation and thought - “oh companies can get away with sociopathic behaviour? I want in!”. Doing harm to the world in the name of your bottom line doesn’t make you clever. It makes you the villain. (Video in question: https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY )

mattgreenrocks 5y ago
What's weird is no one really notices/cares about this type of behavior. I sometimes wonder if this is seen as a feature: institutional sociopathy shields powerful sociopathic people from their consequences. A few possibilities: * people generally cannot discern moral realities within complex systems, instead preferring simpler narratives ("he made a lot of money, he must be a decent chap") * people can see it on occasion, but insist that the problem is the single bad actor rather than the system enabling them * people realize they can't do much about it, as they're implicitly bound up in this system run amok
- josephg 5y ago
  Yeah I’m puzzled why people don’t seem to care too. I think it’s mostly the third - complaining about companies acting malevolently is boring like climate change. Most people would rather not think about it. At the companies themselves, I blame the C suite entirely. It’s a leadership problem. What is the vision for your company? Why do we all get out of bed in the morning? If the goal is to make the world better, then concerns about how your business is impacting the world would matter. But having a goal to simply to enrich the founders (which seems to be the case with most tech companies), is like making an entire car just so you can drive to the gas station. Companies like Twitter and Roblox change the world by their very presence. It’s shameful to waste that capacity by not making the world better in the process.

14 5y ago

I question whether reddit has shadow banned one of my accounts. I post regularly to both and one has about 10k karma and the other seems stuck at 2k. I do get the occasional like but never anything substantial and it makes me wonder if they are severely limiting how many people see my posts. I could just be imagining it but with the thought of shadow band it had me wondering. I couldn’t remember my password so on a separate computer I made a new account and hope to stay logged in on the first one so I don’t lose it is why I am using 2 accounts.

BlueTemplar 5y ago
YouTube can shadowban your comments just because you used (more than one ?) timestamp "links" for the same video !
throwaway21_ 5y ago
Everybody is doing that. Even here on the HN you'll get shadow banned - couple of weeks ago whole thread that someone else started just disappeared. I become aware of that only when searching for my own message from that thread. It was semi-controversial issue but nothing in that thread (at least at the time I saw its content for the last time) warranted that. Basically what I'm seeing as a HN is just a view that someone else curates.