6 ms·

> "deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster." This happened to my t

by rhaksw 4y ago

> "deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster." This happened to my tweet here [1]. It doesn't show up under the parent tweet [2]. It appears to be some sort of domain-based shadow filtering. It's probably because of the cheap .win domain I bought for $2. Why would Twitter censor that link? One could speculate it was because patriots.win moved there from r/The_Donald. But they "don't shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology." right? For the record, I built Reveddit because I perceived that r/The_Donald made heavier use of shadow moderation than the rest of Reddit. However I later learned that its use is common across Reddit and other sites. Shadow moderation is nobody's friend, except to serve as a reminder of that fact. It was purportedly built to deal with bots, but bots know how to check the visibility of their content. It hurts genuine individuals the most. [1] https://twitter.com/rhaksw/status/1594103021407195136 https://twitter.com/rhaksw/status/1594103021407195136 [2] https://twitter.com/TheFIREorg/status/1594078057895063553 https://twitter.com/TheFIREorg/status/1594078057895063553

bonzini 4y ago
They explicitly say they don't shadowban people. Pattern matching for moderation is a completely different thing.
- rhaksw 4y ago
  The public is still going to interpret that as shadow moderation of people's content.
  - bonzini 4y ago
    Shadowbanning people means banning people, it's obviously separate from moderation of individual tweets. AFAIK the only subreddit that has banned me was the_donald, but I can obviously have my content removed if I post to a news subreddit from domains they consider unacceptable. It is honestly silly to be surprised. Any community with just a few thousand users will ban entire domains, it's not surprising that they resort to banning entire TLDs at the billion user level.
etchalon 4y ago
Shadow banning was not built to deal with bots. The practice was popularized in various communities long before bots were a serious problem. It was built to deal with jerks who, when moderated, would sign up under a new account, or would repost the same content over and over again, or who would invade discussions, distract them with vitriol or out of context nonsense – even if each post as original. The whole point of the concept was that the jerks would FEEL like they were contributing to the discussion, but maybe being ignored, while maintain a static history or login that made it easier to moderate them.
- BizarroLand 4y ago
  I think that might have been its original purpose, but I can't help but believe that this is evil. People are quick to jump to the "It's their website, they don't have to do anything yada yada" but there is an implied social contract between the users and the owners that for whatever tier of service (free, paid, ad-supported, whatever) you are using you will receive an equal amount and quality of service as every other user on the platform. I'm not against moderation, I'm against secret moderation that wastes the time of other people's lives. Just be forthright and tell people they are muted but can still participate.
- rhaksw 4y ago
  Platforms say it's for spam [1], which most people interpret to mean bots. I've never seen a platform provide an explanation like the one you give here. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/8k5qh3/if_you_created_a_reddittype_website_would_you/dz568o7/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/8k5qh3/if_y...
  - etchalon 4y ago
    You can look up the Wikipedia article on the practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning It has a fairly rich history, and evolution, as well as counter-measures, and counter-counter-measures and counter-counter-counter-measures.
quadrifoliate 4y ago
You are vastly stretching the definition of shadowbanning if you're posting a public link that everyone (even people who aren't logged in to Twitter) can see, and then claiming that it's suppressed because it doesn't show up in the replies of a totally different account's Tweet.
- rhaksw 4y ago
  It's not a stretch, and it fits the definition Twitter provided. You wouldn't be able to find the tweet unless I'd linked it. It's shadow detached from the parent. Personally I prefer the term shadow moderation.
yonaguska 4y ago
I just want to thank you for creating reveddit.
raydev 4y ago
FYI, I think your tweet must be hidden if the user is logged out. I'm logged in, and can see your tweet in the replies just fine. Still not shadowingbanning.
- rhaksw 4y ago
  You're mistaken. I tweeted twice, once with the .win link, once without. The one with the .win link does not appear even when logged in as a different username. It does appear for me when I'm logged in as the same username. So there is shadow moderation going on. I'm not so bothered about whether it's called a shadow ban or shadow moderation. Also, I can see why some former Twitter employees want this distinction to be understood given the post they previously put out. I just think that's a hard sell for the public who is just coming to understand this issue. Even I didn't know about Twitter's 2018 post. Finally, there was already substantial dispute over whether or not Twitter's initial claims were accurate. See "Shadowbanning is not a thing": black box gaslighting and the power to independently know and credibly critique algorithms" by Kelley Cotter: https://kelleycotter.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Shadowbanning-is-not-a-thing-black-box-gaslighting-and-the-power-to-independently-know-and-credibly-critique-algorithms.pdf https://kelleycotter.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Shadowba...

by rhaksw 4y ago

bonzini 4y ago

They explicitly say they don't shadowban people. Pattern matching for moderation is a completely different thing.

rhaksw 4y ago
The public is still going to interpret that as shadow moderation of people's content.
- bonzini 4y ago
  Shadowbanning people means banning people, it's obviously separate from moderation of individual tweets. AFAIK the only subreddit that has banned me was the_donald, but I can obviously have my content removed if I post to a news subreddit from domains they consider unacceptable. It is honestly silly to be surprised. Any community with just a few thousand users will ban entire domains, it's not surprising that they resort to banning entire TLDs at the billion user level.

etchalon 4y ago

Shadow banning was not built to deal with bots. The practice was popularized in various communities long before bots were a serious problem. It was built to deal with jerks who, when moderated, would sign up under a new account, or would repost the same content over and over again, or who would invade discussions, distract them with vitriol or out of context nonsense – even if each post as original. The whole point of the concept was that the jerks would FEEL like they were contributing to the discussion, but maybe being ignored, while maintain a static history or login that made it easier to moderate them.

BizarroLand 4y ago
I think that might have been its original purpose, but I can't help but believe that this is evil. People are quick to jump to the "It's their website, they don't have to do anything yada yada" but there is an implied social contract between the users and the owners that for whatever tier of service (free, paid, ad-supported, whatever) you are using you will receive an equal amount and quality of service as every other user on the platform. I'm not against moderation, I'm against secret moderation that wastes the time of other people's lives. Just be forthright and tell people they are muted but can still participate.
rhaksw 4y ago
Platforms say it's for spam [1], which most people interpret to mean bots. I've never seen a platform provide an explanation like the one you give here. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/8k5qh3/if_you_created_a_reddittype_website_would_you/dz568o7/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/8k5qh3/if_y...
- etchalon 4y ago
  You can look up the Wikipedia article on the practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning It has a fairly rich history, and evolution, as well as counter-measures, and counter-counter-measures and counter-counter-counter-measures.

quadrifoliate 4y ago

You are vastly stretching the definition of shadowbanning if you're posting a public link that everyone (even people who aren't logged in to Twitter) can see, and then claiming that it's suppressed because it doesn't show up in the replies of a totally different account's Tweet.

rhaksw 4y ago
It's not a stretch, and it fits the definition Twitter provided. You wouldn't be able to find the tweet unless I'd linked it. It's shadow detached from the parent. Personally I prefer the term shadow moderation.

yonaguska 4y ago

I just want to thank you for creating reveddit.

raydev 4y ago

FYI, I think your tweet must be hidden if the user is logged out. I'm logged in, and can see your tweet in the replies just fine. Still not shadowingbanning.

rhaksw 4y ago
You're mistaken. I tweeted twice, once with the .win link, once without. The one with the .win link does not appear even when logged in as a different username. It does appear for me when I'm logged in as the same username. So there is shadow moderation going on. I'm not so bothered about whether it's called a shadow ban or shadow moderation. Also, I can see why some former Twitter employees want this distinction to be understood given the post they previously put out. I just think that's a hard sell for the public who is just coming to understand this issue. Even I didn't know about Twitter's 2018 post. Finally, there was already substantial dispute over whether or not Twitter's initial claims were accurate. See "Shadowbanning is not a thing": black box gaslighting and the power to independently know and credibly critique algorithms" by Kelley Cotter: https://kelleycotter.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Shadowbanning-is-not-a-thing-black-box-gaslighting-and-the-power-to-independently-know-and-credibly-critique-algorithms.pdf https://kelleycotter.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Shadowba...