6 ms·

I think that ghostbanning is unethical

32 points by mah4k4l 4y ago

I think it is a childish and offending policy and am still surprised that HN does that. I mean *who* does that? To make it look to you as if your post got published, but really it didn't? Is that your way of being polite, perhaps? Or your way to maximally offend someone by pretending to be polite? [EDIT: wish I wouldn't have written that next sentence (was a bit pissed off) but too late to erase now with people commenting it] What a slimy and cowardly tactic. What a manifetation of the worst part of human nature. If you ban and censor us, why don't you just tell us so? We're all big boys and girls.

jacknews 4y ago
I agree. It's one thing to shadow-ban an obvious troll. The problem is, just like censorship, where do you stop? For example, I'm an infrequent commenter on Youtube, and then mostly perfectly agreeable, but just this one time I posted a scathing comment on a video. And just this one comment was shadow-banned, I'm guessing at the request of the video author. I tried to show my comment to a friend, and the comment simply did not exist for them, or for several other accounts. I find this kind of selective ghosting, 'invisibly' deleting any critical comments, to be extremely pernicious.
nathanaldensr 4y ago
This is why I always read HN with Show Dead turned on. Often, dead comments are the most interesting and thought-provoking in a thread.
- Normille 4y ago
  Even there though, the dead comments are rendered in a light grey font which is so close to the background colour as to make them pretty much unreadable [for me anyway]. Even highlighting the almost-hidden text doesn't help much as the highlight colour is similar in brightness to the grey text. That smacks of churlishness to me. 'You can choose to show dead comments if you want, but the site will still make it difficult for you to read them'. I always mean to add something to my *monkey scripts to render the dead comments in a visible colour. But it's not the most motivating issue in my intarwebs browsing. So I've not bothered yet.
dairylee 4y ago
> We're all big boys and girls Clearly.
- pieter_mj 4y ago
  Dang surely makes us look that way with his hard work. On hn, everyone is a better version of him/herself. Well, almost.
Normille 4y ago
I can see the thinking behind it. Why let a spammer know no-one is seeing their junk? They'll just keep creating new accounts. But having been on the end of it myself with other accounts here -just for disagreeing with people who were obviously more 'in with the in crowd' than me- and without even receiving any warning first, I think the way it is sometimes implemented is pretty childish.
- codefreeordie 4y ago
  The concept might have originated as an anti-spam tool, but now it's just part of narrative enforcement.
- mah4k4l 4y ago
  It's kind of trivial to check if you're ghostbanned though via wget script or something for example. I don't think ghostbanning slows down spamming enough to be ethically justified.
- selfhoster11 4y ago
  While shadow banning has some benefits, at its heart it is a form of gas-lighting (claiming that everyone can see your message, while it's actually just you), with good intentions in the case of HN. I don't know that it shouldn't be used just because of philosophical objections, but it certainly messes with the idea that a system is meant to either obey or refuse the command given by the user, and do so honestly. Lying to the user that yes, the post is published, while it's intentionally hidden, breaks the assumption that a system will behave consistently.
  - yetihehe 4y ago
    > but it certainly messes with the idea that a system is meant to either obey or refuse the command given by the user, and do so honestly. If some users don't want to act honestly, rest of society should not honour their malice. Honouring malice leads to dissolution of society.
    - selfhoster11 4y ago
throwaway67743 4y ago
Shadow banning is the dumbest, it's so cowardly
speedgoose 4y ago
It’s extremely effective and reduce the moderators workload a lot, because creating a new account and farming karma again is easy. However many spammers and unwanted commenters never notice that they are ghost banned. I agree that it’s not nice to them, which is acceptable most of the time for most people because the ghost banned members are not really nice community members. It is an issue when someone is ghost banned for bad reasons or a bit too fast.
- mah4k4l 4y ago
  Ok I'll agree upon it being a shades of grey - kind of thing. But why not just outright ban someone when it's clear he doesn't fall into those categories of a spammer, a scammer or a troll. Would be much more polite and straightforward in a kind situation where you just seem to have the "wrong opinions" that don't fit the forum or whatever.
smt88 4y ago
Shadowbanning has two obvious benefits for the site: 1) Increases the time it takes trolls to realize they need to create a new account. 2) Pacifies angry, malicious users who might escalate their bad behavior when instantly banned. I haven't seen HN use shadowbanning to censor anyone. The people who are shadowbanned all seem to post unhinged, profane, off-topic, content-free rants. Personally, I think it makes the community better. If you find it slimy and cowardly, perhaps you should vote with your feet and visit other communities instead. There are millions of other message boards.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  >I haven't seen HN use shadowbanning to censor anyone. I have been. ( I would be surprised if you did see this message). Profile of the banned account is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dennis_jeeves https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dennis_jeeves
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    This one showed up
    - dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
      Thanks Fatnino for confirming it showed up. While I appreciate the complexity, effort and pains of what Dang and PG are doing there is some evidence that they are sensitive souls, and cannot stand even polite personal criticism. I cannot be sure of this however.
      - smt88 4y ago
        I've personally criticized dang and he has responded without banning me. PG is an arrogant clown, and I've criticized him many times without incident. He seems to have nothing to do with this site anymore. I looked at your comment history, and my guess is that you were banned for certain rants and health conspiracies, like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28100359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28100359
janandonly 4y ago
> We're all big boys and girls. We (as a species) overall do not behave like adults, really. Not on the internet anyway's, or at least not all the time. But here is the thing: @dang is trying to keep peace and order. He is not trying to be evil or nice. He is "managing" us. Literally. And this path of the least resistance seems to be working fine-ish. Personally, I hate having a great article be "flagged" or immediately down-voted. It is more worrisome that posting a similar article some hours later will make it into the top 10 for the same unfathomable reasons. It appears that being up or down voted is more or less emergent (and random?), and that saddens me a bit.
- janandonly 4y ago
  In a similar vain, I've noticed that the highest chance of making it into the top 20 posts here on HN depends greatly on the hour of the day. Posting around UTC15:00+1 seems to get the best results.
- mah4k4l 4y ago
  > We (as a species) overall do not behave like adults, really. Ok fair enough. Still there's some sort of a social expectation to that effect. And when you don't behave then you'll get the social sanction given by the community. I can dig that this is the internet and that it's hard work to keep up the standard. You seem to see the two sides to this stuff as well.
Bancakes 4y ago
It's worse in videogames like Dark Souls or mobile PUBG where they simply send you off to the shadowrealm of "like-minded" players. And there's no going back. It's a sign of understaffed moderation teams.
onion2k 4y ago
If you ban and censor us, why don't you just tell us so? Because you'll just make a new account.
isaacfrond 4y ago
That this post is [flagged] is of course deliciously ironic.

32 points by mah4k4l 4y ago

jacknews 4y ago

I agree. It's one thing to shadow-ban an obvious troll. The problem is, just like censorship, where do you stop? For example, I'm an infrequent commenter on Youtube, and then mostly perfectly agreeable, but just this one time I posted a scathing comment on a video. And just this one comment was shadow-banned, I'm guessing at the request of the video author. I tried to show my comment to a friend, and the comment simply did not exist for them, or for several other accounts. I find this kind of selective ghosting, 'invisibly' deleting any critical comments, to be extremely pernicious.

nathanaldensr 4y ago

This is why I always read HN with Show Dead turned on. Often, dead comments are the most interesting and thought-provoking in a thread.

Normille 4y ago
Even there though, the dead comments are rendered in a light grey font which is so close to the background colour as to make them pretty much unreadable [for me anyway]. Even highlighting the almost-hidden text doesn't help much as the highlight colour is similar in brightness to the grey text. That smacks of churlishness to me. 'You can choose to show dead comments if you want, but the site will still make it difficult for you to read them'. I always mean to add something to my *monkey scripts to render the dead comments in a visible colour. But it's not the most motivating issue in my intarwebs browsing. So I've not bothered yet.

dairylee 4y ago

> We're all big boys and girls Clearly.

pieter_mj 4y ago
Dang surely makes us look that way with his hard work. On hn, everyone is a better version of him/herself. Well, almost.

Normille 4y ago

I can see the thinking behind it. Why let a spammer know no-one is seeing their junk? They'll just keep creating new accounts. But having been on the end of it myself with other accounts here -just for disagreeing with people who were obviously more 'in with the in crowd' than me- and without even receiving any warning first, I think the way it is sometimes implemented is pretty childish.

codefreeordie 4y ago
The concept might have originated as an anti-spam tool, but now it's just part of narrative enforcement.
mah4k4l 4y ago
It's kind of trivial to check if you're ghostbanned though via wget script or something for example. I don't think ghostbanning slows down spamming enough to be ethically justified.
selfhoster11 4y ago
While shadow banning has some benefits, at its heart it is a form of gas-lighting (claiming that everyone can see your message, while it's actually just you), with good intentions in the case of HN. I don't know that it shouldn't be used just because of philosophical objections, but it certainly messes with the idea that a system is meant to either obey or refuse the command given by the user, and do so honestly. Lying to the user that yes, the post is published, while it's intentionally hidden, breaks the assumption that a system will behave consistently.
- yetihehe 4y ago
  > but it certainly messes with the idea that a system is meant to either obey or refuse the command given by the user, and do so honestly. If some users don't want to act honestly, rest of society should not honour their malice. Honouring malice leads to dissolution of society.
  - selfhoster11 4y ago

throwaway67743 4y ago

Shadow banning is the dumbest, it's so cowardly

speedgoose 4y ago

It’s extremely effective and reduce the moderators workload a lot, because creating a new account and farming karma again is easy. However many spammers and unwanted commenters never notice that they are ghost banned. I agree that it’s not nice to them, which is acceptable most of the time for most people because the ghost banned members are not really nice community members. It is an issue when someone is ghost banned for bad reasons or a bit too fast.

mah4k4l 4y ago
Ok I'll agree upon it being a shades of grey - kind of thing. But why not just outright ban someone when it's clear he doesn't fall into those categories of a spammer, a scammer or a troll. Would be much more polite and straightforward in a kind situation where you just seem to have the "wrong opinions" that don't fit the forum or whatever.

smt88 4y ago

Shadowbanning has two obvious benefits for the site: 1) Increases the time it takes trolls to realize they need to create a new account. 2) Pacifies angry, malicious users who might escalate their bad behavior when instantly banned. I haven't seen HN use shadowbanning to censor anyone. The people who are shadowbanned all seem to post unhinged, profane, off-topic, content-free rants. Personally, I think it makes the community better. If you find it slimy and cowardly, perhaps you should vote with your feet and visit other communities instead. There are millions of other message boards.

dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
>I haven't seen HN use shadowbanning to censor anyone. I have been. ( I would be surprised if you did see this message). Profile of the banned account is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dennis_jeeves https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dennis_jeeves
- Fatnino 4y ago
  This one showed up
  - dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
    Thanks Fatnino for confirming it showed up. While I appreciate the complexity, effort and pains of what Dang and PG are doing there is some evidence that they are sensitive souls, and cannot stand even polite personal criticism. I cannot be sure of this however.
    - smt88 4y ago
      I've personally criticized dang and he has responded without banning me. PG is an arrogant clown, and I've criticized him many times without incident. He seems to have nothing to do with this site anymore. I looked at your comment history, and my guess is that you were banned for certain rants and health conspiracies, like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28100359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28100359

janandonly 4y ago

> We're all big boys and girls. We (as a species) overall do not behave like adults, really. Not on the internet anyway's, or at least not all the time. But here is the thing: @dang is trying to keep peace and order. He is not trying to be evil or nice. He is "managing" us. Literally. And this path of the least resistance seems to be working fine-ish. Personally, I hate having a great article be "flagged" or immediately down-voted. It is more worrisome that posting a similar article some hours later will make it into the top 10 for the same unfathomable reasons. It appears that being up or down voted is more or less emergent (and random?), and that saddens me a bit.

janandonly 4y ago
In a similar vain, I've noticed that the highest chance of making it into the top 20 posts here on HN depends greatly on the hour of the day. Posting around UTC15:00+1 seems to get the best results.
mah4k4l 4y ago
> We (as a species) overall do not behave like adults, really. Ok fair enough. Still there's some sort of a social expectation to that effect. And when you don't behave then you'll get the social sanction given by the community. I can dig that this is the internet and that it's hard work to keep up the standard. You seem to see the two sides to this stuff as well.

Bancakes 4y ago

It's worse in videogames like Dark Souls or mobile PUBG where they simply send you off to the shadowrealm of "like-minded" players. And there's no going back. It's a sign of understaffed moderation teams.

onion2k 4y ago

If you ban and censor us, why don't you just tell us so? Because you'll just make a new account.

isaacfrond 4y ago

That this post is [flagged] is of course deliciously ironic.