7 ms·

How Shadow Banning Can Silently Shift Opinion Online

102 points by r721 2y ago

SSJPython 2y ago
It all comes down to the relationship between social media and freedom of expression. If we view social media as simply a private service, then these companies have the right to do whatever they want. Businesses have the right to refuse service for any reason. But if we view social media as a utility similar to telephones, then free expression should be protected. People can say whatever they want over phone and text. I lean towards the latter. Social media has become the new public square/agora/forum. Yes, its still owned by private enterprise, but it's basically the new town hall at this point.
- brightball 2y ago
  Definition of Fascism... > A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. https://www.wordnik.com/words/fascism https://www.wordnik.com/words/fascism When the government is colluding with private industry to suppress opposing views on social media, you really have to wonder if the word "violent" is even needed in this definition anymore.
  - Jerrrrry 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - dmix 2y ago
    It's the definition of a mixed economy (mixing socialism and capitalism), aka the basis of modern liberalism: an slowly but always expanding top down control of the market, while the rest of the market is generally free.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I do, as well, but I don't think that the companies that run Social media should be let off the hook (which they say they should). Utilities are regulated monopolies. In exchange for a monopoly status, they need to abide by some pretty strict standards (like regulated pricing and service maintenance), and are forced to work with entities that they would normally avoid. Things like open APIs, algorithm access (that could be classified, but should be accessible to folks that are accountable to the consumers, etc.). Not a simple structure. What we have now, is pretty haphazard, and has grown organically. The current utility/public infrastructure setup is the result of hundreds of years of disasters, ripoffs, successes, and learning. Not sure if we have to go through it all again, or if there is a possibility of taking learning from current municipal structure, and apply it here.
  - SSJPython 2y ago
    Yes, I agree with that. But to play Devil's advocate, wouldn't that make social media more prone to government overreach and potential restrictions?
    - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
      Depends. Someone needs to be held Accountable. It would reflect the government. If the government sucks, then social media is probably only one of many things that could be corrupted. It's a lot more likely that corrupting the legal system would be more destructive.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  I honestly think the worst thing we could do to social media is treat it like the telephone service. Have people used telephones recently? The network is so infiltrated by scam artists (and the tooling to remove them from the network is so toothless) that it's functionally one giant attack vector against the most vulnerable telephone users these days. The fact that Google is trumpeting adding AI to a phone to detect when you are getting scammed is indicative of how badly the network has been poisoned by the lack of anyone's ability to regulate access. We already know what an unfettered free-expression network looks like. It looks like telephone and email. It's a scammer's playground.
  - corinroyal 2y ago
    Yes. This is exactly the argument the EFF makes. Utility-style regulation involves the government picking winners who become unresponsive monopolies. Notice how OpenAI is eager to be regulated. They know that means they win. That's the opposite of what we need the FAANGS et al. to become. And personally, I don't want the government telling me how to moderate my network. The EFF recommendation is anti-trust enforcement to insure these services don't hold American communications hostage. We must attack their moats to enable smaller competitors to have at more level playing field.
    - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
      The problem is social media is inherently anti competitive. It relies on network effects, so you have to either limit their size or use utility style regulation.
- zo1 2y ago
  I don't see how any of this is difficult. Ban illegal content, period. Not that that's hard, it already is. And leave the rest alone. Gore/graphic content -> filter with a toggle for those that want to view it. Bullying -> does it cross the line into an actual law being broken, if so, then ban it. Makes sensitive people nervous, uncomfortable and angry -> leave it be, but if you really wanna go far stick a sentiment analysis thingie on it and allow people to selectively filter it below their own threshold. There is so much that can be done simply, without breaching anyone's freedoms and without teetering into Orwellian 1984 conspiracy territory about wide-scale mind control and opinion shifting. The problem comes when people naturally express themselves, it makes <insert group here> uncomfortable and it inconveniently bubbles up the rankings. E.g. I bet you right now that 20% of the entire american internet population simply doesn't like Biden and would mock him for his, probably innocent, old-age antics. But if that opinion were to "manifest" into some sort of catchy "Biden is old and sucks" hashtag or meme that needs reporting, well that's uncomfortable for TPTB, or the elites, or the media or whatever you wanna call it, and must be stopped. The internet is the ultimate direct-democracy tool we have right now, and it's being manipulated precisely because it breaks "representative" democracy. Another uncomfortable topic: trans people in sports. It will absolutely blow up in one direction if people were organically allowed to organize and find others with similar viewpoints. Instead, they're banned, scared into shutting up, shadow-banned, or worse cancelled and doxxed.
  - dangus 2y ago
    Why under your specifications am I not free to start a social media network of my own that has its own rules? Why can’t I start my own social media website about cars where any topics that aren’t related to car culture and discussion are not allowed? Your line is illegality, but my line as the owner of the social media network might be something else. Is private ownership banned now?
    - zo1 2y ago
      I'm all for private ownership as I'm an Libertarian/AnCap. But long story short, we have a flawed world right now, and to make it better right now, we have to work within it and that means making a completely arbitrary line. One that optimizes freedom whilst balancing the abuse, because it's clear to everyone not drinking the koolaid that social media is being used to affect public opinion. We've crossed the boundary of pure private ownership of anything many years ago. Heck, I don't even have private ownership of my own body, so a say in a highly influential component of our society is a small price to pay to keep the evil at bay.
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  >> but it's basically the new town hall at this point. ... then free expression should be protected. IF its the "new town hall" then were gonna have a fuck ton of rules. You're not "Free" to scream fire in a crowded building, you cant make up crisis actors and expect NOT to get sued to death.... The protection of freedom of expression exists. No one is stoping you from hosting your own platform based on what ever nonsense you make up. I dont have to give you a box to stand on, no one does. Thats not how it ever worked.
  - kornhole 2y ago
    We already have setup NOSTR and the fediverse that interoperate with each other. Many of us have set very simple rules to comply with the first amendment and legal precedent around it which is say anything as long as it is not illegal such as directing imminent harm on someone.
  - jlawson 2y ago
    >No one is stoping you from hosting your own platform based on what ever nonsense you make up. They actually are. CloudFlare will block you, Visa will refuse payments, Google will delist you, Apple app store will delist your app, and you'll be subject to endless legal harassment from activists if your site allows people to communicate substantially out of line with the San Francisco progressive bloc.
- dangus 2y ago
  I think where we have to be careful with going toward the latter idea is that not all social media platforms are general purpose, and that free expression includes a lot of unwanted content (spam, scams, off-topic posts, etc). Free expression isn’t something that can be realistically protected when a social media platform has an explicit purpose, code of conduct, and/or ideals. For example, an LGBTQ social media network has to be able to ban anti-LGBTQ content and users. Hacker News needs to be able to remove non-tech industry-related off-topic posts. /r/pcgaming needs to be able to remove posts about mobile gaming. Spam and unwanted self-promotion is often removed by moderators of social media outlets. Moderation is key to a workable social media experience. There’s also a lot of 100% legal free expression that platforms have to be able to choose not to host. Pornography is an common example. The thing that makes this topic difficult is that social media isn’t really pure person-to-person speech (e.g. like a person on soapbox) and it also isn’t really pure curated media (e.g. a television channel or news website published by an editor). It’s like a hybrid of the concepts.
- lo_zamoyski 2y ago
  Private enterprise is bounded by considerations of the common good. So it is reasonable to regulate private enterprise when it becomes an essential service or utility, or has a huge impact on the common good.
- scoofy 2y ago
  4chan exists. It's really the online "free speech zone" some people seem to be pining for. I've moderated some large subreddits in the past, and am a strong free speech supporter, but I'm also actually perfectly happy not dealing with people spamming the n-word in every forum they can find because they're legally entitled to. "Congress shall make no law" really does mean congress. Unlike telephones, if the forums are open to the public, then so some decorum is needed.
brigadier132 2y ago
There are also people that are terminally online that learn exactly how to take down content. Features like flag and report are not used by normal users but by people often trying to push an agenda and silence opposing viewpoints.
- Jerrrrry 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - pjc50 2y ago
    > HN's 5 post a day limit This only applies to low-karma users, I can post here all day long. edit: the greentext user is now flagged to oblivion, but not by me
    - shadowgovt 2y ago
      Low-karma users and users who have been explicitly flagged as problem children. You can ask to have the flag lifted (but I haven't, because it keeps me honest and focused ;) ).
    - krapp 2y ago
      No, it's an explicit filter applied to accounts considered low value. I've had it for a while.
    - xienze 2y ago
      Nah I think the parent is talking about something different. I have decent karma, my account is old, and I can post as much as I like, except when I’m having a lot of back-and-forth in the same thread/comment section and discussing contentious things. Eventually I’ll get hit with HN’s passive-aggressive form of shadowbanning someone from a discussion: “you’re posting too much, slow down.”
      - boomboomsubban 2y ago
        The "reply" button not showing up? That's an automatic feature, see https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#hidden-reply-links https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#hidden...
Workaccount2 2y ago
The law to ban tiktok was passed because the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users. All the talk about privacy and data collection were mostly to muddy the waters by bringing in all tech to the conversion, and divert attention from solely tiktok ("Everyone does it so why focus on tiktok?!"). It's still a threat, I'm not trying to minimize it, but tiktok was banned primarily because of who controls the content delivered, not who is collecting the data.
- pjc50 2y ago
  > the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users. Was this actually proven in specific incidents? Is this the only media outlet this applies to?
  - nradov 2y ago
    It's not just media outlets. Chinese Communist Party officials are directly embedded in all of their large corporations and can override regular management decisions. We have no visibility into exactly what they're doing but from a security perspective we have to assume the worst.
    - pjc50 2y ago
      "It's definitely bad, please trust us in US intelligence when we say this" (I'm sure it is; there have been plenty of people disappeared https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/china-disappeared-high-profile-figures-who-have-gone-missing-during-xi-jinpings-rule https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/china-disappea... , but I'd just like to have a little evidence rather than do an Iraq war again)
  - germinator 2y ago
    "Direct" is not a helpful word. In the US, the government has control over the content too, it just so happens that it mostly concerns itself with combatting certain moral vices (from prostitution to bootleg fireworks) - although to be fair, it also lightly pressured big tech into combatting political "misinformation". In China, the same mechanisms exist, except the controls on speech are much tighter and the punishments more severe. Every other tech company operating there has a story of officials showing up with demands or threatening employees. I worked at two places where this happened. In addition, most businesses operate as formal or quasi-formal public-private partnership, where the CCP has officials within the corporate management structure. Again, ask anyone who tried to start a foreign-owned business in China. You can make a reasonable argument that having an oppressive and geopolitically adversarial foreign government effectively in control of the most popular youth social media platform in the country is not great. Or you can make a reasonable free-trade argument. Free trade works only if all participants follow the rules; if Western social media can't operate on their market, they don't get to operate on ours. There are things to dislike about the US government, but I really don't get the contrarian takes on TikTok. China is objectively worse and its government's legitimacy and lasting power is built in the bodies of tens of millions of victims. We're not getting along right now. This doesn't require cynicism to explain.
optimalsolver 2y ago
Much more interesting would be "heavenbanning": https://twitter.com/nearcyan/status/1532076277947330561 https://twitter.com/nearcyan/status/1532076277947330561
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  That's a riot! Yeah, it could definitely happen.
- jokoon 2y ago
  never heard of that is that proven? how did they find about that? is it reddit doing it, or is it other users? EDIT: ok so that's a fake screenshot, the users says it is... sorry but this is misleading. he says hypothetical, and then makes a fake screenshot with the NYT on it, that's really disingenuine. twitter gonna twitter
  - r721 2y ago
    The screenshot is illustrative/fake, from the next tweet in linked thread: >although the above article is fake (hence my phrasing as a 'hypothetical' and the article being dated in the future in 2024!), it's feasible to build this as a weekend project at this point, so it won't remain fake for very long now!
    - zztop44 2y ago
      And the ad for Google “shower cams” ;)
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  Given what we know about how people can end up radicalized in echo chambers with like-minded humans, auto-ensconcing outliers in an echo chamber of fake respondents agreeing with them sounds like a recipe for fomenting a lot of stochastic terrorism.
- jl6 2y ago
  You are so right about that!
kylebenzle 2y ago
This article explains why HN (Dang) should stop using this practice. I used a "shadowbanned" account for potentially years on this site without realizing I had been banned. An email to Dang and he was gracious to reinstate me but I feel like a jackass for talking to myself for god knows how long. According to a study by Yale SOM, shadow banning can shift users’ opinions and increase polarization by selectively muting and amplifying posts in ways that appear neutral. This subtle control over collective opinions makes it difficult for users to realize they are being censored, underscoring the need for transparency and better regulation.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- vsuperpower2020 2y ago
  I suspect that there's a risk of psychological harm when people are exposed to shadow banning. Having to constantly ask yourself "Am I real? Can other people see me?" is not healthy or normal behavior, but after being shadowbanned on a particular site you start having to do it constantly.
  - r721 2y ago
    Experienced users just learn to look at the place where their post/comment should appear using private/incognito browser window.
    - thatjoeoverthr 2y ago
      "just" be paranoid? A health person's reaction to a weak response is probably to assume, with some humility, that others didn't appreciate their comment so much. We're talking here about how the social media platform _ought to behave._
      - pseudalopex 2y ago
        A weak response and no response ever are different.
wsu77bl 2y ago
[dead]
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Unfortunately the manipulation of opinions is exactly what the moderation/censorship schemes on major social media platforms resulted in. Shadowbanning is just one problematic tool among many. I’m glad to see studies exploring this, but I feel like it was also an obvious reality for years, and nothing was or has been done about it. Those engaging in censorship and mass manipulation don’t care because they are helping their political goals, even if it is unethical. Personally I don’t think the platforms being private matters - at their scale the big social media platforms are public squares, and should be regulated like that. Or maybe treated like a phone carrier or utility, where even if they’re private they’re subject to regulation that forces them to provide service to all customers.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  I'm wondering what it's going to take for people to realize that most of their online fora (present company included) aren't the great Greek philosophical salons of yore; they're bored people on the Internet trading quips for serotonin hits. The amount of accurate information you find online is probably worse than what you find talking to people IRL, but we seem to insist on treating it as a truth source instead of a game people are playing with each other.
  - carimura 2y ago
    Yes, but the problem is throughout all of history you could only talk to so many people IRL in a day... (same with newspapers, etc.) Now you can consume nearly unlimited opinions in a day so whatever it is we think about the accuracy of information online, it's shaping impressionable minds faster than biology and society can cope.
- anamax 2y ago
  > Personally I don’t think the platforms being private matters - at their scale the big social media platforms are public squares, and should be regulated like that. Malls and shopping centers in California are treated as public squares for 1st amendment purposes. It's unclear why Facebook et al aren't given the same treatment, at least in California. (Note this is California, not Federal, law.) https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/pruneyard-shopping-center-v-robins/ https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/pruneyard-shopping-c...
highcountess 2y ago
[flagged]
- brap 2y ago
  You’re not
- pjc50 2y ago
  Counterpoint: HN is only good because it's moderated. The moderation is what distinguishes it from a chan board.
  - krapp 2y ago
    Counter-counterpoint: effective moderation doesn't require shadowbanning, and the ever increasing amount of chan-level garbage that gets moderated here demonstrates that shadowbanning doesn't make HN good, it just sweeps the bad under the rug.
  - GeoAtreides 2y ago
    but OP, how can I judge how good HN moderation is I can't read the comments that were removed/flagged?
    - foldr 2y ago
      You can turn on 'showdead' you settings to see flagged comments. I don't always agree with how HN is moderated (or with the decisions fellow HN users make about flagging), but the majority of flagged comments are exactly the kind of thing you'd expect.
      - GeoAtreides 2y ago
        it was more of a principle-type of question, not a how-to I do have them visible And I 100% don't agree, most of them are just against the grain opinions. And some are spam, I guess.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
buywarbonds 2y ago
IMO Shadow banning is consumer fraud and should be illegal. Deleting things is fine but lying about it is fraud.
- EA-3167 2y ago
  This comes back to the old adage, we aren't the consumers, we're the product.
dmarchand90 2y ago
"the researchers built a simulation of a real social network" I just find this to be such a large detail that it's hard to gloss over. What are the assumptions of this model in the simulation? How accurate is the model? How did you evaluate that accuracy? How sensitive are the results to the model's parameters?
- itsdrewmiller 2y ago
  It's disappointing to me that 10+ hours after this post your comment or one like it isn't (even close to) the top one. The article doesn't explain, AT ALL, how their model works. Does tik tok "shadow ban" the way they model? Does any social network?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kornhole 2y ago
I assume all trending/recommended nudges on centrally controlled platforms are psychological operations. I see the absence of them on decentralized protocols such as NOSTR or the fediverse to be a feature.
whoopdedo 2y ago
I take issue with this experiment's use of the term "shadowbanning". The simulation they describe tested the effects of showing a tweet to others based on the viewers' preferences. > the network might choose to show the content of a moderate user to a relatively right-leaning connection ... but block that same content from the timeline of a left-leaning connection That's not shadowbanning because the tweet is still being shown to some people. That's normal algorithmic sorting with down ranking. A true shadowban would result in a tweet not being shown to anybody. What they describe is more like de-listing from the global timeline but still being shown to followers. Now you're just talking about search bubbles. What's strange is they describe this as "neutral". > At first blush, the banning appears to impact every user more or less equally. How is that equal? What the viewer sees depends on their cohort. It's the same kind of manipulation that we've known about for years. The unique issue with a shadowban is how it affects the creator. Specifically a shadowban is intended to counteract ban evasion using multiple accounts. If you're going to make a conclusion about whether or not shadowbanning should be allowed it should be done by comparing silent versus explicit bans.
RickJWagner 2y ago
Just another way your opinions are being silently influenced. It's bad enough that 'news' sources are now totally politically biased. Social media platforms, search engines, entertainment providers, etc. are in on it too. Kudos to anyone who works to keep a level perspective. It's not easy.

102 points by r721 2y ago

It all comes down to the relationship between social media and freedom of expression. If we view social media as simply a private service, then these companies have the right to do whatever they want. Businesses have the right to refuse service for any reason. But if we view social media as a utility similar to telephones, then free expression should be protected. People can say whatever they want over phone and text. I lean towards the latter. Social media has become the new public square/agora/forum. Yes, its still owned by private enterprise, but it's basically the new town hall at this point.

brightball 2y ago
Definition of Fascism... > A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. https://www.wordnik.com/words/fascism https://www.wordnik.com/words/fascism When the government is colluding with private industry to suppress opposing views on social media, you really have to wonder if the word "violent" is even needed in this definition anymore.
- Jerrrrry 2y ago
  [flagged]
- dmix 2y ago
  It's the definition of a mixed economy (mixing socialism and capitalism), aka the basis of modern liberalism: an slowly but always expanding top down control of the market, while the rest of the market is generally free.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
I do, as well, but I don't think that the companies that run Social media should be let off the hook (which they say they should). Utilities are regulated monopolies. In exchange for a monopoly status, they need to abide by some pretty strict standards (like regulated pricing and service maintenance), and are forced to work with entities that they would normally avoid. Things like open APIs, algorithm access (that could be classified, but should be accessible to folks that are accountable to the consumers, etc.). Not a simple structure. What we have now, is pretty haphazard, and has grown organically. The current utility/public infrastructure setup is the result of hundreds of years of disasters, ripoffs, successes, and learning. Not sure if we have to go through it all again, or if there is a possibility of taking learning from current municipal structure, and apply it here.
- SSJPython 2y ago
  Yes, I agree with that. But to play Devil's advocate, wouldn't that make social media more prone to government overreach and potential restrictions?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    Depends. Someone needs to be held Accountable. It would reflect the government. If the government sucks, then social media is probably only one of many things that could be corrupted. It's a lot more likely that corrupting the legal system would be more destructive.
shadowgovt 2y ago
I honestly think the worst thing we could do to social media is treat it like the telephone service. Have people used telephones recently? The network is so infiltrated by scam artists (and the tooling to remove them from the network is so toothless) that it's functionally one giant attack vector against the most vulnerable telephone users these days. The fact that Google is trumpeting adding AI to a phone to detect when you are getting scammed is indicative of how badly the network has been poisoned by the lack of anyone's ability to regulate access. We already know what an unfettered free-expression network looks like. It looks like telephone and email. It's a scammer's playground.
- corinroyal 2y ago
  Yes. This is exactly the argument the EFF makes. Utility-style regulation involves the government picking winners who become unresponsive monopolies. Notice how OpenAI is eager to be regulated. They know that means they win. That's the opposite of what we need the FAANGS et al. to become. And personally, I don't want the government telling me how to moderate my network. The EFF recommendation is anti-trust enforcement to insure these services don't hold American communications hostage. We must attack their moats to enable smaller competitors to have at more level playing field.
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    The problem is social media is inherently anti competitive. It relies on network effects, so you have to either limit their size or use utility style regulation.
zo1 2y ago
I don't see how any of this is difficult. Ban illegal content, period. Not that that's hard, it already is. And leave the rest alone. Gore/graphic content -> filter with a toggle for those that want to view it. Bullying -> does it cross the line into an actual law being broken, if so, then ban it. Makes sensitive people nervous, uncomfortable and angry -> leave it be, but if you really wanna go far stick a sentiment analysis thingie on it and allow people to selectively filter it below their own threshold. There is so much that can be done simply, without breaching anyone's freedoms and without teetering into Orwellian 1984 conspiracy territory about wide-scale mind control and opinion shifting. The problem comes when people naturally express themselves, it makes <insert group here> uncomfortable and it inconveniently bubbles up the rankings. E.g. I bet you right now that 20% of the entire american internet population simply doesn't like Biden and would mock him for his, probably innocent, old-age antics. But if that opinion were to "manifest" into some sort of catchy "Biden is old and sucks" hashtag or meme that needs reporting, well that's uncomfortable for TPTB, or the elites, or the media or whatever you wanna call it, and must be stopped. The internet is the ultimate direct-democracy tool we have right now, and it's being manipulated precisely because it breaks "representative" democracy. Another uncomfortable topic: trans people in sports. It will absolutely blow up in one direction if people were organically allowed to organize and find others with similar viewpoints. Instead, they're banned, scared into shutting up, shadow-banned, or worse cancelled and doxxed.
- dangus 2y ago
  Why under your specifications am I not free to start a social media network of my own that has its own rules? Why can’t I start my own social media website about cars where any topics that aren’t related to car culture and discussion are not allowed? Your line is illegality, but my line as the owner of the social media network might be something else. Is private ownership banned now?
  - zo1 2y ago
    I'm all for private ownership as I'm an Libertarian/AnCap. But long story short, we have a flawed world right now, and to make it better right now, we have to work within it and that means making a completely arbitrary line. One that optimizes freedom whilst balancing the abuse, because it's clear to everyone not drinking the koolaid that social media is being used to affect public opinion. We've crossed the boundary of pure private ownership of anything many years ago. Heck, I don't even have private ownership of my own body, so a say in a highly influential component of our society is a small price to pay to keep the evil at bay.
zer00eyz 2y ago
>> but it's basically the new town hall at this point. ... then free expression should be protected. IF its the "new town hall" then were gonna have a fuck ton of rules. You're not "Free" to scream fire in a crowded building, you cant make up crisis actors and expect NOT to get sued to death.... The protection of freedom of expression exists. No one is stoping you from hosting your own platform based on what ever nonsense you make up. I dont have to give you a box to stand on, no one does. Thats not how it ever worked.
- kornhole 2y ago
  We already have setup NOSTR and the fediverse that interoperate with each other. Many of us have set very simple rules to comply with the first amendment and legal precedent around it which is say anything as long as it is not illegal such as directing imminent harm on someone.
- jlawson 2y ago
  >No one is stoping you from hosting your own platform based on what ever nonsense you make up. They actually are. CloudFlare will block you, Visa will refuse payments, Google will delist you, Apple app store will delist your app, and you'll be subject to endless legal harassment from activists if your site allows people to communicate substantially out of line with the San Francisco progressive bloc.
dangus 2y ago
I think where we have to be careful with going toward the latter idea is that not all social media platforms are general purpose, and that free expression includes a lot of unwanted content (spam, scams, off-topic posts, etc). Free expression isn’t something that can be realistically protected when a social media platform has an explicit purpose, code of conduct, and/or ideals. For example, an LGBTQ social media network has to be able to ban anti-LGBTQ content and users. Hacker News needs to be able to remove non-tech industry-related off-topic posts. /r/pcgaming needs to be able to remove posts about mobile gaming. Spam and unwanted self-promotion is often removed by moderators of social media outlets. Moderation is key to a workable social media experience. There’s also a lot of 100% legal free expression that platforms have to be able to choose not to host. Pornography is an common example. The thing that makes this topic difficult is that social media isn’t really pure person-to-person speech (e.g. like a person on soapbox) and it also isn’t really pure curated media (e.g. a television channel or news website published by an editor). It’s like a hybrid of the concepts.
lo_zamoyski 2y ago
Private enterprise is bounded by considerations of the common good. So it is reasonable to regulate private enterprise when it becomes an essential service or utility, or has a huge impact on the common good.
scoofy 2y ago
4chan exists. It's really the online "free speech zone" some people seem to be pining for. I've moderated some large subreddits in the past, and am a strong free speech supporter, but I'm also actually perfectly happy not dealing with people spamming the n-word in every forum they can find because they're legally entitled to. "Congress shall make no law" really does mean congress. Unlike telephones, if the forums are open to the public, then so some decorum is needed.

brigadier132 2y ago

There are also people that are terminally online that learn exactly how to take down content. Features like flag and report are not used by normal users but by people often trying to push an agenda and silence opposing viewpoints.

Jerrrrry 2y ago
[flagged]
- pjc50 2y ago
  > HN's 5 post a day limit This only applies to low-karma users, I can post here all day long. edit: the greentext user is now flagged to oblivion, but not by me
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    Low-karma users and users who have been explicitly flagged as problem children. You can ask to have the flag lifted (but I haven't, because it keeps me honest and focused ;) ).
  - krapp 2y ago
    No, it's an explicit filter applied to accounts considered low value. I've had it for a while.
  - xienze 2y ago
    Nah I think the parent is talking about something different. I have decent karma, my account is old, and I can post as much as I like, except when I’m having a lot of back-and-forth in the same thread/comment section and discussing contentious things. Eventually I’ll get hit with HN’s passive-aggressive form of shadowbanning someone from a discussion: “you’re posting too much, slow down.”
    - boomboomsubban 2y ago
      The "reply" button not showing up? That's an automatic feature, see https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#hidden-reply-links https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#hidden...

Workaccount2 2y ago

The law to ban tiktok was passed because the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users. All the talk about privacy and data collection were mostly to muddy the waters by bringing in all tech to the conversion, and divert attention from solely tiktok ("Everyone does it so why focus on tiktok?!"). It's still a threat, I'm not trying to minimize it, but tiktok was banned primarily because of who controls the content delivered, not who is collecting the data.

pjc50 2y ago
> the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users. Was this actually proven in specific incidents? Is this the only media outlet this applies to?
- nradov 2y ago
  It's not just media outlets. Chinese Communist Party officials are directly embedded in all of their large corporations and can override regular management decisions. We have no visibility into exactly what they're doing but from a security perspective we have to assume the worst.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    "It's definitely bad, please trust us in US intelligence when we say this" (I'm sure it is; there have been plenty of people disappeared https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/china-disappeared-high-profile-figures-who-have-gone-missing-during-xi-jinpings-rule https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/china-disappea... , but I'd just like to have a little evidence rather than do an Iraq war again)
- germinator 2y ago
  "Direct" is not a helpful word. In the US, the government has control over the content too, it just so happens that it mostly concerns itself with combatting certain moral vices (from prostitution to bootleg fireworks) - although to be fair, it also lightly pressured big tech into combatting political "misinformation". In China, the same mechanisms exist, except the controls on speech are much tighter and the punishments more severe. Every other tech company operating there has a story of officials showing up with demands or threatening employees. I worked at two places where this happened. In addition, most businesses operate as formal or quasi-formal public-private partnership, where the CCP has officials within the corporate management structure. Again, ask anyone who tried to start a foreign-owned business in China. You can make a reasonable argument that having an oppressive and geopolitically adversarial foreign government effectively in control of the most popular youth social media platform in the country is not great. Or you can make a reasonable free-trade argument. Free trade works only if all participants follow the rules; if Western social media can't operate on their market, they don't get to operate on ours. There are things to dislike about the US government, but I really don't get the contrarian takes on TikTok. China is objectively worse and its government's legitimacy and lasting power is built in the bodies of tens of millions of victims. We're not getting along right now. This doesn't require cynicism to explain.

optimalsolver 2y ago

Much more interesting would be "heavenbanning": https://twitter.com/nearcyan/status/1532076277947330561 https://twitter.com/nearcyan/status/1532076277947330561

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
That's a riot! Yeah, it could definitely happen.
jokoon 2y ago
never heard of that is that proven? how did they find about that? is it reddit doing it, or is it other users? EDIT: ok so that's a fake screenshot, the users says it is... sorry but this is misleading. he says hypothetical, and then makes a fake screenshot with the NYT on it, that's really disingenuine. twitter gonna twitter
- r721 2y ago
  The screenshot is illustrative/fake, from the next tweet in linked thread: >although the above article is fake (hence my phrasing as a 'hypothetical' and the article being dated in the future in 2024!), it's feasible to build this as a weekend project at this point, so it won't remain fake for very long now!
  - zztop44 2y ago
    And the ad for Google “shower cams” ;)
shadowgovt 2y ago
Given what we know about how people can end up radicalized in echo chambers with like-minded humans, auto-ensconcing outliers in an echo chamber of fake respondents agreeing with them sounds like a recipe for fomenting a lot of stochastic terrorism.
jl6 2y ago
You are so right about that!

kylebenzle 2y ago

This article explains why HN (Dang) should stop using this practice. I used a "shadowbanned" account for potentially years on this site without realizing I had been banned. An email to Dang and he was gracious to reinstate me but I feel like a jackass for talking to myself for god knows how long. According to a study by Yale SOM, shadow banning can shift users’ opinions and increase polarization by selectively muting and amplifying posts in ways that appear neutral. This subtle control over collective opinions makes it difficult for users to realize they are being censored, underscoring the need for transparency and better regulation.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
vsuperpower2020 2y ago
I suspect that there's a risk of psychological harm when people are exposed to shadow banning. Having to constantly ask yourself "Am I real? Can other people see me?" is not healthy or normal behavior, but after being shadowbanned on a particular site you start having to do it constantly.
- r721 2y ago
  Experienced users just learn to look at the place where their post/comment should appear using private/incognito browser window.
  - thatjoeoverthr 2y ago
    "just" be paranoid? A health person's reaction to a weak response is probably to assume, with some humility, that others didn't appreciate their comment so much. We're talking here about how the social media platform _ought to behave._
    - pseudalopex 2y ago
      A weak response and no response ever are different.

wsu77bl 2y ago

[dead]

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

Unfortunately the manipulation of opinions is exactly what the moderation/censorship schemes on major social media platforms resulted in. Shadowbanning is just one problematic tool among many. I’m glad to see studies exploring this, but I feel like it was also an obvious reality for years, and nothing was or has been done about it. Those engaging in censorship and mass manipulation don’t care because they are helping their political goals, even if it is unethical. Personally I don’t think the platforms being private matters - at their scale the big social media platforms are public squares, and should be regulated like that. Or maybe treated like a phone carrier or utility, where even if they’re private they’re subject to regulation that forces them to provide service to all customers.

shadowgovt 2y ago
I'm wondering what it's going to take for people to realize that most of their online fora (present company included) aren't the great Greek philosophical salons of yore; they're bored people on the Internet trading quips for serotonin hits. The amount of accurate information you find online is probably worse than what you find talking to people IRL, but we seem to insist on treating it as a truth source instead of a game people are playing with each other.
- carimura 2y ago
  Yes, but the problem is throughout all of history you could only talk to so many people IRL in a day... (same with newspapers, etc.) Now you can consume nearly unlimited opinions in a day so whatever it is we think about the accuracy of information online, it's shaping impressionable minds faster than biology and society can cope.
anamax 2y ago
> Personally I don’t think the platforms being private matters - at their scale the big social media platforms are public squares, and should be regulated like that. Malls and shopping centers in California are treated as public squares for 1st amendment purposes. It's unclear why Facebook et al aren't given the same treatment, at least in California. (Note this is California, not Federal, law.) https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/pruneyard-shopping-center-v-robins/ https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/pruneyard-shopping-c...

highcountess 2y ago

[flagged]

brap 2y ago
You’re not
pjc50 2y ago
Counterpoint: HN is only good because it's moderated. The moderation is what distinguishes it from a chan board.
- krapp 2y ago
  Counter-counterpoint: effective moderation doesn't require shadowbanning, and the ever increasing amount of chan-level garbage that gets moderated here demonstrates that shadowbanning doesn't make HN good, it just sweeps the bad under the rug.
- GeoAtreides 2y ago
  but OP, how can I judge how good HN moderation is I can't read the comments that were removed/flagged?
  - foldr 2y ago
    You can turn on 'showdead' you settings to see flagged comments. I don't always agree with how HN is moderated (or with the decisions fellow HN users make about flagging), but the majority of flagged comments are exactly the kind of thing you'd expect.
    - GeoAtreides 2y ago
      it was more of a principle-type of question, not a how-to I do have them visible And I 100% don't agree, most of them are just against the grain opinions. And some are spam, I guess.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

buywarbonds 2y ago

IMO Shadow banning is consumer fraud and should be illegal. Deleting things is fine but lying about it is fraud.

EA-3167 2y ago
This comes back to the old adage, we aren't the consumers, we're the product.

dmarchand90 2y ago

"the researchers built a simulation of a real social network" I just find this to be such a large detail that it's hard to gloss over. What are the assumptions of this model in the simulation? How accurate is the model? How did you evaluate that accuracy? How sensitive are the results to the model's parameters?

itsdrewmiller 2y ago
It's disappointing to me that 10+ hours after this post your comment or one like it isn't (even close to) the top one. The article doesn't explain, AT ALL, how their model works. Does tik tok "shadow ban" the way they model? Does any social network?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

kornhole 2y ago

I assume all trending/recommended nudges on centrally controlled platforms are psychological operations. I see the absence of them on decentralized protocols such as NOSTR or the fediverse to be a feature.

whoopdedo 2y ago

I take issue with this experiment's use of the term "shadowbanning". The simulation they describe tested the effects of showing a tweet to others based on the viewers' preferences. > the network might choose to show the content of a moderate user to a relatively right-leaning connection ... but block that same content from the timeline of a left-leaning connection That's not shadowbanning because the tweet is still being shown to some people. That's normal algorithmic sorting with down ranking. A true shadowban would result in a tweet not being shown to anybody. What they describe is more like de-listing from the global timeline but still being shown to followers. Now you're just talking about search bubbles. What's strange is they describe this as "neutral". > At first blush, the banning appears to impact every user more or less equally. How is that equal? What the viewer sees depends on their cohort. It's the same kind of manipulation that we've known about for years. The unique issue with a shadowban is how it affects the creator. Specifically a shadowban is intended to counteract ban evasion using multiple accounts. If you're going to make a conclusion about whether or not shadowbanning should be allowed it should be done by comparing silent versus explicit bans.

RickJWagner 2y ago

Just another way your opinions are being silently influenced. It's bad enough that 'news' sources are now totally politically biased. Social media platforms, search engines, entertainment providers, etc. are in on it too. Kudos to anyone who works to keep a level perspective. It's not easy.