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A moderator can't shadowban you. But someone criticizing Ellen Pao got a shadowban recently, which means the actual administrators (Reddit employees) did it. I

by iopq 11y ago

A moderator can't shadowban you. But someone criticizing Ellen Pao got a shadowban recently, which means the actual administrators (Reddit employees) did it. I don't know if it was for criticizing her or for something else.

untog 11y ago
Well, that's actually relevant the policies being discussed here. If they were criticising Pao in a reasoned, sensible way, that's a problem. But if, as often happens on Reddit, they flew off the handle and were abusive/inflammatory/etc. then perhaps they deserved it. It's a similar system to how Hacker News operates, AFAIK.
- mreiland 11y ago
  no it isn't, that's exactly the concern the initiator of this thread of conversation had. It doesn't matter if it's reasonable or not as long as it isn't ultimately harmful to the person. If you dox someone or follow them around for a length of time attacking them, you should be banned for it as it creates a hostile environment. But that is a far cry from telling someone in no uncertain terms that you think their opinion is ridiculous. Personally, I've been wanting a reddit alternative for a while, but everything out there sucks in some manner (don't get me started on hubski...). I would love for this to push enough people onto the other platforms for the content to be there. I doubt it will, but that doesn't stop me from wishing it would happen.
  - untog 11y ago
    It doesn't matter if it's reasonable or not as long as it isn't ultimately harmful to the person. That's your opinion on it. Reddit, it would appear, has a different opinion. As, I believe, would the admins of Hacker News.
  - debacle 11y ago
    Try http://voat.co/ http://voat.co/. It is very small right now, but growing.
- iopq 11y ago
  Do you know what a shadowban is? It's not just a page that says "you were banned for being abusive" It's actually an anti-spam measure, because when you post while being shadowbanned you see your posts, but nobody else does. That means you could be posting for a long time and not even know all of your posts are actually invisible. That's not just telling someone to fuck off the site. That's actually erasing them from the site because they won't even make a new account - they'll keep posting and not even know they're invisible.
  - untog 11y ago
    I am aware of what it means, yes - though I'm not really sure why the nature of shadowbanning is relevant in whether someone deserves to be banned or not. As you suggest, if someone is outright banned they'll likely just make a new account. Shadowbanning is, if anything, a far more sensible type of ban. And it's something that - at the risk of repeating myself - Hacker News also does.
    - iopq 11y ago
      I think that's very severe and undeserved. Just criticizing someone in a post shouldn't get you hellbanned. That's for persistent trolls that just won't go away.
      - untog 11y ago
        Just criticizing someone in a post shouldn't get you hellbanned. But we have no idea if it was "just criticism", or if it was worse.
        Karunamon 11y ago
        The actual content of the post that appeared to merit the shadowban is as follows: Buddy Fletcher, husband of Reddit CEO Ellen Pao, is being described as being the operator of Ponzi scheme ~144 million dollars of a pension fund was lost Ellen Pao is now accused of frivolous lawsuits to try and stay afloat and some other shit. Seeing as she is a CEO of a large company and has a fraudster for a husband I think it's safe to say we have a textbook ASPD/Sociopath on our hands https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/35uyil/transparency_is_important_to_us_and_today_we_take/cr86tqc?context=3 https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/35uyil/transp...
- washadjeffmad 11y ago
  Permanent, site-wide shadowbans are not intended for use outside of spam/bot countermeasures and are not policy against users, especially for a nasty one off, no matter who against. That they are happening to users at all is evidence of either an unreported change in internal policy or high level vigilante modding. And as users, there is no way to find out how many are affected by this. Another issue exists where after a person discovers their shadowban, they request its removal and are denied -- because there was no note left for why they were banned. What if it were placed by a Reddit mod and not a sub mod? How could anyone make a reasonable appeal in that case? Their opaqueness is why shadowbans are effective, but mods treating user appeals like gag orders with top secret clearances is not in the spirit of their duties. After a user discovers their shadowban, it's no longer effective, so there is no reason not to disclose information to them about it during their appeal. Opening the appeals process so users can see for themselves why they were banned, reversing appeals against noteless bans without contest, limiting the duration of all bans not made against spam/bots, a system of blind review, and increasing mod accountability would all serve to strengthen users' ability to stay active on the site without compromising the intended function of the shadowban.
A_COMPUTER 11y ago
I am not a habitual Reddit user and know little about the controversy with Pao, but I am interested in the subject of Internet site moderation so I have been looking into what has been posted in this thread. I found this. Pao linked to this post by a non-reddit admin recently as an example of how she thinks shadowbanning should be done: https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/35ym8t/promote_ideas_protect_people/cr91z7r https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/35ym8t/promote_ideas_... Selected quotes: >You will never be told exactly what will earn a shadowban, because telling you means telling the sociopaths, and then they will figure out a way to get around it, or worse, they will file shitty, frivolous lawsuits in bad faith for being shadowbanned while "not having done anything wrong"[...]Shadowbans are intentionally a grey area, an unknown, a nebulous and unrestricted tool that the administrators will use at their sole discretion in order to keep reddit running[.] The first thoughts that come to my mind are "this isn't compatible with a culture of transparency" and "there has to be a better way" but I can appreciate how hard it must be to keep a site the size of Reddit running.
- gambiter 11y ago
  Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't see anything wrong with her explanation. Anyone who has run/moderated a public forum knows the pain all too well. Of course, this only works well when the overlord behaves in a way that the subjects agree with. As soon as the overlord makes one too many bad calls, the subjects revolt.
- innguest 11y ago
  Ellen Pao is on a power trip. Let's not forget she just filed a frivolous lawsuit against her employer. That's something that liars and other people without morals do, they try to take advantage of others by feigning victimhood when they know they're wrong. Now she won't tell you the rules because like every unprincipled person, she wants to be able to change the rules as it pleases her. That's the type of person she is. The quotes make her sound like a tyrant. That's what leftists become when they're given any power. I'll watch Reddit go down from far away as I do not want to be in the same website as liar Ellen Pao - she might frivolously sue me.
  - 11y ago
Karunamon 11y ago
That's actually not completely accurate.. Reddit has this bot called AutoModerator which has, among its numerous other functions, the ability to blacklist users. A blacklisted user's comments/posts will be deleted as soon as the bot sees them. In theory, this only applies to subreddits where automoderator is installed, but in practice, automoderator is installed on every sub above a certain size simply because it does a lot of cool things. In essence, a user can be "soft" shadowbanned this way.
Gustomaximus 11y ago
It's deeper than that. There's entire post being removed when conversation about Pao was negative. I'm amazed the board are leaving her in place from this. This kind of behaviour will send the community elsewhere pretty fast. Reddit is losing its core principles so will be interesting to watch. Overall I believe a better solution would be to give users the ability to block people. Ideally via a digital fingerprint so people can't just use a fresh username. This would be more inline with an open community in control of its own destiny.

by iopq 11y ago

untog 11y ago

Well, that's actually relevant the policies being discussed here. If they were criticising Pao in a reasoned, sensible way, that's a problem. But if, as often happens on Reddit, they flew off the handle and were abusive/inflammatory/etc. then perhaps they deserved it. It's a similar system to how Hacker News operates, AFAIK.

mreiland 11y ago
no it isn't, that's exactly the concern the initiator of this thread of conversation had. It doesn't matter if it's reasonable or not as long as it isn't ultimately harmful to the person. If you dox someone or follow them around for a length of time attacking them, you should be banned for it as it creates a hostile environment. But that is a far cry from telling someone in no uncertain terms that you think their opinion is ridiculous. Personally, I've been wanting a reddit alternative for a while, but everything out there sucks in some manner (don't get me started on hubski...). I would love for this to push enough people onto the other platforms for the content to be there. I doubt it will, but that doesn't stop me from wishing it would happen.
- untog 11y ago
  It doesn't matter if it's reasonable or not as long as it isn't ultimately harmful to the person. That's your opinion on it. Reddit, it would appear, has a different opinion. As, I believe, would the admins of Hacker News.
- debacle 11y ago
  Try http://voat.co/ http://voat.co/. It is very small right now, but growing.
iopq 11y ago
Do you know what a shadowban is? It's not just a page that says "you were banned for being abusive" It's actually an anti-spam measure, because when you post while being shadowbanned you see your posts, but nobody else does. That means you could be posting for a long time and not even know all of your posts are actually invisible. That's not just telling someone to fuck off the site. That's actually erasing them from the site because they won't even make a new account - they'll keep posting and not even know they're invisible.
- untog 11y ago
  I am aware of what it means, yes - though I'm not really sure why the nature of shadowbanning is relevant in whether someone deserves to be banned or not. As you suggest, if someone is outright banned they'll likely just make a new account. Shadowbanning is, if anything, a far more sensible type of ban. And it's something that - at the risk of repeating myself - Hacker News also does.
  - iopq 11y ago
    I think that's very severe and undeserved. Just criticizing someone in a post shouldn't get you hellbanned. That's for persistent trolls that just won't go away.
    - untog 11y ago
      Just criticizing someone in a post shouldn't get you hellbanned. But we have no idea if it was "just criticism", or if it was worse.
      - Karunamon 11y ago
        The actual content of the post that appeared to merit the shadowban is as follows: Buddy Fletcher, husband of Reddit CEO Ellen Pao, is being described as being the operator of Ponzi scheme ~144 million dollars of a pension fund was lost Ellen Pao is now accused of frivolous lawsuits to try and stay afloat and some other shit. Seeing as she is a CEO of a large company and has a fraudster for a husband I think it's safe to say we have a textbook ASPD/Sociopath on our hands https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/35uyil/transparency_is_important_to_us_and_today_we_take/cr86tqc?context=3 https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/35uyil/transp...
washadjeffmad 11y ago
Permanent, site-wide shadowbans are not intended for use outside of spam/bot countermeasures and are not policy against users, especially for a nasty one off, no matter who against. That they are happening to users at all is evidence of either an unreported change in internal policy or high level vigilante modding. And as users, there is no way to find out how many are affected by this. Another issue exists where after a person discovers their shadowban, they request its removal and are denied -- because there was no note left for why they were banned. What if it were placed by a Reddit mod and not a sub mod? How could anyone make a reasonable appeal in that case? Their opaqueness is why shadowbans are effective, but mods treating user appeals like gag orders with top secret clearances is not in the spirit of their duties. After a user discovers their shadowban, it's no longer effective, so there is no reason not to disclose information to them about it during their appeal. Opening the appeals process so users can see for themselves why they were banned, reversing appeals against noteless bans without contest, limiting the duration of all bans not made against spam/bots, a system of blind review, and increasing mod accountability would all serve to strengthen users' ability to stay active on the site without compromising the intended function of the shadowban.

A_COMPUTER 11y ago

I am not a habitual Reddit user and know little about the controversy with Pao, but I am interested in the subject of Internet site moderation so I have been looking into what has been posted in this thread. I found this. Pao linked to this post by a non-reddit admin recently as an example of how she thinks shadowbanning should be done: https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/35ym8t/promote_ideas_protect_people/cr91z7r https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/35ym8t/promote_ideas_... Selected quotes: >You will never be told exactly what will earn a shadowban, because telling you means telling the sociopaths, and then they will figure out a way to get around it, or worse, they will file shitty, frivolous lawsuits in bad faith for being shadowbanned while "not having done anything wrong"[...]Shadowbans are intentionally a grey area, an unknown, a nebulous and unrestricted tool that the administrators will use at their sole discretion in order to keep reddit running[.] The first thoughts that come to my mind are "this isn't compatible with a culture of transparency" and "there has to be a better way" but I can appreciate how hard it must be to keep a site the size of Reddit running.

gambiter 11y ago
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't see anything wrong with her explanation. Anyone who has run/moderated a public forum knows the pain all too well. Of course, this only works well when the overlord behaves in a way that the subjects agree with. As soon as the overlord makes one too many bad calls, the subjects revolt.
innguest 11y ago
Ellen Pao is on a power trip. Let's not forget she just filed a frivolous lawsuit against her employer. That's something that liars and other people without morals do, they try to take advantage of others by feigning victimhood when they know they're wrong. Now she won't tell you the rules because like every unprincipled person, she wants to be able to change the rules as it pleases her. That's the type of person she is. The quotes make her sound like a tyrant. That's what leftists become when they're given any power. I'll watch Reddit go down from far away as I do not want to be in the same website as liar Ellen Pao - she might frivolously sue me.
- 11y ago

Karunamon 11y ago

That's actually not completely accurate.. Reddit has this bot called AutoModerator which has, among its numerous other functions, the ability to blacklist users. A blacklisted user's comments/posts will be deleted as soon as the bot sees them. In theory, this only applies to subreddits where automoderator is installed, but in practice, automoderator is installed on every sub above a certain size simply because it does a lot of cool things. In essence, a user can be "soft" shadowbanned this way.

Gustomaximus 11y ago

It's deeper than that. There's entire post being removed when conversation about Pao was negative. I'm amazed the board are leaving her in place from this. This kind of behaviour will send the community elsewhere pretty fast. Reddit is losing its core principles so will be interesting to watch. Overall I believe a better solution would be to give users the ability to block people. Ideally via a digital fingerprint so people can't just use a fresh username. This would be more inline with an open community in control of its own destiny.