4 ms·

I agree with the author that frequent shadowbanning is harmful to communities, but I think he's missing some nuance. First, not every member of a website is tr

by pubby 4y ago

I agree with the author that frequent shadowbanning is harmful to communities, but I think he's missing some nuance. First, not every member of a website is trying to be part of its community, so it's unfair to expect the community to care about them in return. Second, most people are not rational, and some people are mentally ill. If you have a person with schizophrenia posting, transparent moderation won't be heeded in the way that you want.

rhaksw 4y ago
Upvote for the dissenting view which should be heard. Your two points both came up in the replies to my post, yet no example was ever given. Do you have some intractable cases to share? In my replies I also suggest that shadow removal of a toxic comment can also be perceived by the user as support for their views. I've yet to hear the harms of that possibility refuted.
- pubby 4y ago
  Looking at Hackernews, some people create accounts solely to promote their own websites, but do not interact or care about the community in other ways. You could call this spam, but I don't think most of the posters think of themselves as being spammers. Still, their presence brings the average quality of the site down. From what I understand, HN typically shadowbans these people from submitting links to their own website, but does not silence them in other ways. They can still share their views and be heard, just not for self-promotion. It might seem like a good idea to tell them this up-front, but keep in mind that most of them do not care about the community, and the ones that do care more about their own self-promotion than HN. If you tell them that they're banned for not participating, do you really expect them to do a good job all of a sudden? Chances are they'll just post low-effort fascimile comments in an attempt to blend in. Keep in mind these are not spambots. Nobody is trying to be malevolent. But working with these people isn't always a worthwhile effort. For a concrete example, I recall r/tabletopgamedesign having a problem of self-promotion (and I was part of the problem!). Lots of the users there post to promote their own board-game business venture. The mods tell them this isn't allowed without participating, so they instead post low-effort comments and self-insert their content when possible. e.g. if you ask them how to do something, they'll start with "Well, when designing (INSERT PERSONAL BUSINESS), I took (APPROACH) and found that (BLAH BLAH). You can read more (AT MY WEBSITE)". This drops the overall quality of conversation. Regarding my second point, someone like Terry Davis is a prime example. Terry liked to post nonsense in threads because of his schizophrenia. He was banned several times, but would always come back with new accounts. Shadowbanning him seemed to be the ideal solution, as he was content with writing comments that would not be seen. Unlike the self-promotion people, he was not trying to be heard. Rather, he was trying to speak, and did not want that taken away from him. It's no different than those crackpots who write pages and pages on their own personal homepages that nobody reads [1][2]. They just wanna write. [1] https://theoffice.fandom.com/wiki/Creed_Thoughts https://theoffice.fandom.com/wiki/Creed_Thoughts [2] https://timecube.2enp.com/ https://timecube.2enp.com/
  - xg15 4y ago
    > They can still share their views and be heard, just not for self-promotion. It might seem like a good idea to tell them this up-front, but keep in mind that most of them do not care about the community, and the ones that do care more about their own self-promotion than HN. What about false positives? If I post a link to an interesting article somewhere deep inside a discussion and the system flags it as self-promotion, I have no way to react to this if the system goes out of its way not to tell me.
    - Teever 4y ago
      Is this really a situation worth caring about?
      - xg15 4y ago
        Posting links in a discussion? I'd say yes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 4y ago
  I appreciate your passion on this topic but you've posted hundreds of times about this and basically nothing about anything else. That's a single-purpose account, and we don't allow those on HN [1] because they're too agenda-driven—which is the opposite of curiosity, which is what HN is supposed to be for: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. I don't want to ban you, partly because people will inevitably go "omg they banned $account for talking about shadowbanning" (and then I have to go "no, people talk about that on HN all the time and it's fine", blah blah blah) – but more because you're obviously sincere and a good user. But can you please use HN as intended? That means posting on a variety of topics that you personally find interesting, and not treating it as a target for an agenda. This applies regardless of what the agenda is and how worthy it is [2]. It's predictable, and predictability and curiosity are disjoint. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20single%20purpose%20account&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7682659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7682659
  - rhaksw 4y ago
    Thanks for the heads up, dang. I'll take it elsewhere.
roflyear 4y ago
> First, not every member of a website is trying to be part of its community, so it's unfair to expect the community to care about them in return. The issue with this is that who gets decide what these people think? I think communities need rules, but on HN for example they are extremely strict. Essentially, "no politics, no controversy" ???
- krapp 4y ago
  Why is that an issue? Contrary to popular opinion, no site is a public commons. Rather every site regardless of its policies is a petty fiefdom run at the whim of the site owners. Hacker News seeks a specific culture and a high bar of content quality and it aggressively curates and moderates towards that end, with freedom of speech being secondary to the goal of reducing entropy, and thus the slide into Eternal September. If you don't like that you can make your own Hacker News with blackjack and hookers elsewhere, or just go to Reddit or 4chan and find all the politics and controversy you want. Both approaches have value, and there's room on the web for both.
  - roflyear 4y ago
    It is an issue b/c that's a huge range of topics, and it isn't possible to know where the line is. Your line, as a reasonable human, may not meet up with mine, which may not meet up with dang's, etc.. and then you have issues, because no one really knows the rules. Your line may be really close to dang's, so maybe you think everything is OK, because your judgement has been sound. Mine clearly has not been, tho I haven't TRIED to step on any toes, but I can't post here much b/c I upset dang. I am not saying HN shouldn't be allowed to limit things this way, I'm saying I think it's stupid. > Hacker News seeks a specific culture and a high bar of content quality and it aggressively curates and moderates towards that end But HN doesn't do this. HN moderates and curates to what they want, there's a lot of judgement involved. There's plenty of low quality posts here. The issue is what I think is low quality is not what HN mods think is low quality (that isn't an issue because I think it, but the concept is the problem). What I think is low quality is not what you think is low quality, etc... this is OK: it's only bad, in my opinion, when a select few people get to decide that for everyone. Maybe a certain portion of the rest of the users will agree with it and it will be OK for them, but... it's just not a just system. I'm not talking about people spamming porn or something to the forum, btw. But "porn" has a pretty clearly defined meaning, and you can also just say "no NSFW posts" - which I also think is fine! As long as people understand the rule! The rules I have an issue with are "no politics" when in reality it is "no politics that we think may upset people, or something - we don't tell you exactly what we mean, we'll figure it out and never tell you, but don't step on the landmine!!" You can see that is a problem, no?

by pubby 4y ago

rhaksw 4y ago

Upvote for the dissenting view which should be heard. Your two points both came up in the replies to my post, yet no example was ever given. Do you have some intractable cases to share? In my replies I also suggest that shadow removal of a toxic comment can also be perceived by the user as support for their views. I've yet to hear the harms of that possibility refuted.

pubby 4y ago
Looking at Hackernews, some people create accounts solely to promote their own websites, but do not interact or care about the community in other ways. You could call this spam, but I don't think most of the posters think of themselves as being spammers. Still, their presence brings the average quality of the site down. From what I understand, HN typically shadowbans these people from submitting links to their own website, but does not silence them in other ways. They can still share their views and be heard, just not for self-promotion. It might seem like a good idea to tell them this up-front, but keep in mind that most of them do not care about the community, and the ones that do care more about their own self-promotion than HN. If you tell them that they're banned for not participating, do you really expect them to do a good job all of a sudden? Chances are they'll just post low-effort fascimile comments in an attempt to blend in. Keep in mind these are not spambots. Nobody is trying to be malevolent. But working with these people isn't always a worthwhile effort. For a concrete example, I recall r/tabletopgamedesign having a problem of self-promotion (and I was part of the problem!). Lots of the users there post to promote their own board-game business venture. The mods tell them this isn't allowed without participating, so they instead post low-effort comments and self-insert their content when possible. e.g. if you ask them how to do something, they'll start with "Well, when designing (INSERT PERSONAL BUSINESS), I took (APPROACH) and found that (BLAH BLAH). You can read more (AT MY WEBSITE)". This drops the overall quality of conversation. Regarding my second point, someone like Terry Davis is a prime example. Terry liked to post nonsense in threads because of his schizophrenia. He was banned several times, but would always come back with new accounts. Shadowbanning him seemed to be the ideal solution, as he was content with writing comments that would not be seen. Unlike the self-promotion people, he was not trying to be heard. Rather, he was trying to speak, and did not want that taken away from him. It's no different than those crackpots who write pages and pages on their own personal homepages that nobody reads [1][2]. They just wanna write. [1] https://theoffice.fandom.com/wiki/Creed_Thoughts https://theoffice.fandom.com/wiki/Creed_Thoughts [2] https://timecube.2enp.com/ https://timecube.2enp.com/
- xg15 4y ago
  > They can still share their views and be heard, just not for self-promotion. It might seem like a good idea to tell them this up-front, but keep in mind that most of them do not care about the community, and the ones that do care more about their own self-promotion than HN. What about false positives? If I post a link to an interesting article somewhere deep inside a discussion and the system flags it as self-promotion, I have no way to react to this if the system goes out of its way not to tell me.
  - Teever 4y ago
    Is this really a situation worth caring about?
    - xg15 4y ago
      Posting links in a discussion? I'd say yes.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dang 4y ago
I appreciate your passion on this topic but you've posted hundreds of times about this and basically nothing about anything else. That's a single-purpose account, and we don't allow those on HN [1] because they're too agenda-driven—which is the opposite of curiosity, which is what HN is supposed to be for: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. I don't want to ban you, partly because people will inevitably go "omg they banned $account for talking about shadowbanning" (and then I have to go "no, people talk about that on HN all the time and it's fine", blah blah blah) – but more because you're obviously sincere and a good user. But can you please use HN as intended? That means posting on a variety of topics that you personally find interesting, and not treating it as a target for an agenda. This applies regardless of what the agenda is and how worthy it is [2]. It's predictable, and predictability and curiosity are disjoint. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20single%20purpose%20account&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7682659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7682659
- rhaksw 4y ago
  Thanks for the heads up, dang. I'll take it elsewhere.

roflyear 4y ago

> First, not every member of a website is trying to be part of its community, so it's unfair to expect the community to care about them in return. The issue with this is that who gets decide what these people think? I think communities need rules, but on HN for example they are extremely strict. Essentially, "no politics, no controversy" ???

krapp 4y ago
Why is that an issue? Contrary to popular opinion, no site is a public commons. Rather every site regardless of its policies is a petty fiefdom run at the whim of the site owners. Hacker News seeks a specific culture and a high bar of content quality and it aggressively curates and moderates towards that end, with freedom of speech being secondary to the goal of reducing entropy, and thus the slide into Eternal September. If you don't like that you can make your own Hacker News with blackjack and hookers elsewhere, or just go to Reddit or 4chan and find all the politics and controversy you want. Both approaches have value, and there's room on the web for both.
- roflyear 4y ago
  It is an issue b/c that's a huge range of topics, and it isn't possible to know where the line is. Your line, as a reasonable human, may not meet up with mine, which may not meet up with dang's, etc.. and then you have issues, because no one really knows the rules. Your line may be really close to dang's, so maybe you think everything is OK, because your judgement has been sound. Mine clearly has not been, tho I haven't TRIED to step on any toes, but I can't post here much b/c I upset dang. I am not saying HN shouldn't be allowed to limit things this way, I'm saying I think it's stupid. > Hacker News seeks a specific culture and a high bar of content quality and it aggressively curates and moderates towards that end But HN doesn't do this. HN moderates and curates to what they want, there's a lot of judgement involved. There's plenty of low quality posts here. The issue is what I think is low quality is not what HN mods think is low quality (that isn't an issue because I think it, but the concept is the problem). What I think is low quality is not what you think is low quality, etc... this is OK: it's only bad, in my opinion, when a select few people get to decide that for everyone. Maybe a certain portion of the rest of the users will agree with it and it will be OK for them, but... it's just not a just system. I'm not talking about people spamming porn or something to the forum, btw. But "porn" has a pretty clearly defined meaning, and you can also just say "no NSFW posts" - which I also think is fine! As long as people understand the rule! The rules I have an issue with are "no politics" when in reality it is "no politics that we think may upset people, or something - we don't tell you exactly what we mean, we'll figure it out and never tell you, but don't step on the landmine!!" You can see that is a problem, no?