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All it means is that people with unpopular views are punished without being told. That is neither good for them nor good for the community.

by rhaksw 4y ago

c22 4y ago
I read with showdead on and often traverse a user's post history when I've determined that they've been shadowbanned. In almost all cases the root activity that caused the ban was not an unpopular view, but rather a series of abusive comments. Sometimes it was a brief abberation and many of the user's subsequent posts are acceptable (though often still low quality). More often than not, the user continues to be abusive and break site guidelines. In the realm of non-shadowbanned dead posts I do see a lot of community penalizing of merely unpopular opinions.
- maxbond 4y ago
  I can corroborate this.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Completely disagree. Usually (I'd say 60-40 or 70-30) you find that they generally submit perfectly fine content but once upon a time ago they got embroiled in an escalating flame war and made the mistake of not realizing that when arguing for the minority viewpoint the bar for that constitutes "abusive" and "break site rules" is far, far lower. If I had a penny for every worthless in-group signaling comment, worthless reference rebuttal and worthless assumption of bad faith that gets cut slack because it's in favor of the "right things" when adjacent comments on the other side are not I would be very rich. Edit: I look at unoffensive comments to see why that user was shadow banned and when I see an "out there" comment I go down the rabbit hole to see if that is a characteristic comment or a one-off so I think I get a pretty good spread.
  - c22 4y ago
    Are you going down the rabbit-hole of every shadowbanned user you find, or just investigating dead posts that you don't think should be dead? It's possible your sample is experiencing selection bias. When I find users I think are unfairly shadowbanned I vouch for their posts, try to inform them they are shadowbanned and/or reach out to moderators with an ask to reconsider.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - maxbond 4y ago
    This hasn't been my experience when poking at banned users and reading dang's comment history. Especially reading dang's comment history it seems evident the amount of charity someone is extended is proportional to the size of their nonabusive comment history, not related to their ideology. People who create an account to make a series of flamey comments get banned; people who get embroiled in multiple flame wars, months apart, while participating in the community in between, get numerous warnings. I'm not fully comfortable with this system, but I don't think it's bad in the way you're saying it's bad. I'd encourage everyone who's concerned about moderation on HN to read a few pages of dang's comment history.
acdha 4y ago
“Unpopular” doesn’t feel like the right word choice to me. Using showdead I’ve never seen a post by a user whose history has genuine good-faith arguments which are being unfairly suppressed. It’s always spam or abusive behavior, and unless it’s something like rank anti-semitism it usually takes ignoring multiple warnings.
- halfjoking 4y ago
  This 100%. People are acting like HN has stricter moderation than reddit. These people must not hold any views reddit tries to censor. I make a lot of anti-vaxx comments, and on HN my account has never been shadowbanned. I'm able to say what I want even though it might be downvoted and eventually become hidden. On any mainstream subreddit there's a 90% chance I'll be banned for life. And 10% chance I'll get a shadowban - and 0% chance if a mod sees an anti-vaxx comment they won't remove it. On reddit you post in a sub mainstream mods don't like, and I get automated messages that I'm banned for /r/pics, /r/news, /r/cats automatically without even interacting with them. The only subreddits I can talk freely are removed, quarantined or don't have enough users for any site-wide mods to notice. Compared to HN it's an authoritarian hellhole over there.

All it means is that people with unpopular views are punished without being told. That is neither good for them nor good for the community.

by rhaksw 4y ago

All it means is that people with unpopular views are punished without being told. That is neither good for them nor good for the community.

c22 4y ago

I read with showdead on and often traverse a user's post history when I've determined that they've been shadowbanned. In almost all cases the root activity that caused the ban was not an unpopular view, but rather a series of abusive comments. Sometimes it was a brief abberation and many of the user's subsequent posts are acceptable (though often still low quality). More often than not, the user continues to be abusive and break site guidelines. In the realm of non-shadowbanned dead posts I do see a lot of community penalizing of merely unpopular opinions.

maxbond 4y ago
I can corroborate this.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
Completely disagree. Usually (I'd say 60-40 or 70-30) you find that they generally submit perfectly fine content but once upon a time ago they got embroiled in an escalating flame war and made the mistake of not realizing that when arguing for the minority viewpoint the bar for that constitutes "abusive" and "break site rules" is far, far lower. If I had a penny for every worthless in-group signaling comment, worthless reference rebuttal and worthless assumption of bad faith that gets cut slack because it's in favor of the "right things" when adjacent comments on the other side are not I would be very rich. Edit: I look at unoffensive comments to see why that user was shadow banned and when I see an "out there" comment I go down the rabbit hole to see if that is a characteristic comment or a one-off so I think I get a pretty good spread.
- c22 4y ago
  Are you going down the rabbit-hole of every shadowbanned user you find, or just investigating dead posts that you don't think should be dead? It's possible your sample is experiencing selection bias. When I find users I think are unfairly shadowbanned I vouch for their posts, try to inform them they are shadowbanned and/or reach out to moderators with an ask to reconsider.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- maxbond 4y ago
  This hasn't been my experience when poking at banned users and reading dang's comment history. Especially reading dang's comment history it seems evident the amount of charity someone is extended is proportional to the size of their nonabusive comment history, not related to their ideology. People who create an account to make a series of flamey comments get banned; people who get embroiled in multiple flame wars, months apart, while participating in the community in between, get numerous warnings. I'm not fully comfortable with this system, but I don't think it's bad in the way you're saying it's bad. I'd encourage everyone who's concerned about moderation on HN to read a few pages of dang's comment history.

acdha 4y ago

“Unpopular” doesn’t feel like the right word choice to me. Using showdead I’ve never seen a post by a user whose history has genuine good-faith arguments which are being unfairly suppressed. It’s always spam or abusive behavior, and unless it’s something like rank anti-semitism it usually takes ignoring multiple warnings.

halfjoking 4y ago
This 100%. People are acting like HN has stricter moderation than reddit. These people must not hold any views reddit tries to censor. I make a lot of anti-vaxx comments, and on HN my account has never been shadowbanned. I'm able to say what I want even though it might be downvoted and eventually become hidden. On any mainstream subreddit there's a 90% chance I'll be banned for life. And 10% chance I'll get a shadowban - and 0% chance if a mod sees an anti-vaxx comment they won't remove it. On reddit you post in a sub mainstream mods don't like, and I get automated messages that I'm banned for /r/pics, /r/news, /r/cats automatically without even interacting with them. The only subreddits I can talk freely are removed, quarantined or don't have enough users for any site-wide mods to notice. Compared to HN it's an authoritarian hellhole over there.