I have moderated large internet spaces. There are people with severe mental issues who, when confronted with direct moderation, will make it their sole purpose in life to ruin the forum. I'm talking 20 hours a day of spam, ban evasion, doxxing, DDoSes, direct messaging other members, and whatever else an intelligent-but-disturbed human can come up with, solely dedicated to ruining the space the moderators are trying to protect.<p>Shadowbanning is like a dodge—instead of head-butting such an explosive personality, you let them slide by and rant on into the ether. It can be, and is, abused, but it is also extremely effective and time-efficient when dealing with "the weirdos." (Generally they will go away after some time not getting any engagement, positive or negative.) That can make or break a volunteer force, and if it's a paid moderation team the cost reduction is real.
I agree with the author that frequent shadowbanning is harmful to communities, but I think he's missing some nuance.<p>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.<p>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.
I have been on HN ~5yrs and only like last week I started getting an auto-ban of sorts about "you are posting too fast" even when I post ~15min+ between posts and then it takes something like 6-24 hours (haven't kept trying to measure it) to reset. Been meaning to do ask hn post about this but that counts against my daily allowance of like two posts (hope this one makes it lol).<p>I think moderation (in general not at HN specifically) should be transparent, truthful and measured. But at the same time, if you don't pay to use a site you have no say in how it is operated.<p>I would like to know if I said things that are not welcome at hn? Or perhaps I broke rules without knowing it? I try my best to be reapectful and kind to others but I also do get angry at some posts and let emotion get the best of me sometimes. But if I did something unacceptable I cannot stop doing it unless I am told what that thing is, so shadowbans work against the moderator's interests if the moderated subject is being cooperative.<p>At HN: the decision to allow political and controversial non-technical posts also means accepting undesirable or controversial views (even if they get downvotes) else you are just creating an echo chamber of ideas. I had a post where every hour or so when I checked it goes upvote then down vote all day long because it was controversial I guess but I thought I simply had a strong opinion on a subject instead of being hostile or posting something irrelevant or invaluable to the discussion when I started noticing the restriction.<p>But like I said, I have no qualms on any moderation decisions on a free to access site. But also, I am very supportive of solutions to scale moderation. I really think paid human moderators can be scaled for many online communities and social networks.<p>Why isn't FB hiring people for $12+/hr to moderate stuff? The idea that it is either humans or ML as opposed to humans working with ML is silly. Or maybe they are already doing that at major social networks. I always wondered why reddit for example doesn't allow subreddit members to have paid subscriptions to support moderators.
Given HN is often the enlightened discourse space, while having quite the amount of shadowbans itself, does that mean shadowbans are the avante-garde good? if not, why do we still do it?
Is there a way to see shadowbanned posts? I have "showdead" turned on, I see Evon Latrail's posts every day. Is "shadowban" something different than what happened to Evon?
The whole concept of shadow banning has always seemed ethically and possibly legally dubious to me. I understand that it is highly effective and I can't think of a more efficient way to lower moderation burden, but it seems to me like it is a violation of an implicit contract.<p>If a user pays for an online experience (either directly or via interaction with ads) I don't see how the provider is justified in accepting that payment while serving them a counterfeit of the experience they agreed to.<p>If someone is misbehaving in a restaurant you kick them out. You don't get to take their money and serve them sawdust.