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EyesAlight  Formerly blendorgat  2yr ago (text post)   2519 thread views

Do we already have shadowbans?

I noticed that the comment counts don't seem to line up with the total comments on this post, and a couple others. Do we already have shadow bans in place here, or is this just some delay issue?

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We do, sort of, and also not sort of.

So, first, we have a similar comment filtering system that we had before. In theory we had it disabled but it turns out there's a hilarious bug where there's no "disable" option, and instead people with negative scores are getting filtered, which I think is hilarious and do not plan to change. (We'll be enabling it soon anyway.)

This means that top-level posts need to be approved by us before they go public, as do comments from new users. Turns out these still contribute to the reply count and so that's part of what you're seeing.

Second, if deletes their post, it doesn't decrement the post counter. We should probably fix that. I accidentally replied to someone with a test account and then deleted it and now that post eternally has an extra comment mark. Such is life.

Third, we do actually have shadowbans as well - it came with the site - but we haven't used any yet.

Do you solemnly swear to not use shadowbans?

Well I've actually shadowbanned a few trolls since then.

So . . . no. Sorry :V

Why not just ban them? What is so horrible about open and clear moderation?

Why leave reddit only to bring the worst parts of reddit along with you? You could make something better.

Banning them alerts them to the fact that they've been banned, which encourages them to start a new account, which makes our jobs harder.

The thing about dealing with trolls is that you need to do two things:

  • Make sure they're not having fun.

  • Spend as little of your effort as possible in order to spend as much of their effort as possible.

Shadowbanning is great for both of these; there's a point where they say "oh, wait, I've been trolling for two weeks and nobody saw any of it, that was . . . just wasted." And at the same time this means we get considerably more impact for our effort; we ban them half as often, or even a third as often.

I don't plan to use this for anything except trolls, but if someone is straight-up spamming (or, not-hypothetically, mass-downvoting), then I don't really feel bad about it; if they're going to play the game of Annoy The Other Person, then I will play that game too.

LOL. Amateurs.

Imagine trolling without keeping detailed spread sheets of your interact ratios.

Why even bother.

Just go back to being agreeable if you aren't going to put in the effort to be disagreeable

if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well

The block button exists for a reason. If someone feels user X isn't contributing quality comments, they can block them. Or just downvote them if it's less extreme.

For literal spam sure I get it. But "trolls"? Such a subjective reason to open the door to redditry.

I personally will never put effort into anything in a place where I know I'll be banned at the drop of a hat. Why bother? Especially if, like you said, it may be silently hidden from everyone.

And maybe you only ban low quality dumb troll comments to a reasonable standard. But all it takes is you appointing another janny who's slightly less fair about determining who's a troll. Maybe you appoint a janny team that turns out to all be trans, and they start shadowbanning anyone who questions transdeology.

I just don't understand how groups that have been run off of reddit can still be drawn to strong moderation. I'd take a blockable troll over a power hungry moderator I can't do anything about any day of the week.

I personally will never put effort into anything in a place where I know I'll be banned at the drop of a hat. Why bother? Especially if, like you said, it may be silently hidden from everyone.

It's not as though the moderation here is some great mystery. The mod team has a considerable history, and while they have their critics, I have found their actions to be exceedingly reasonable in the past.

I personally will never put effort into anything in a place where I know I'll be banned at the drop of a hat. Why bother? Especially if, like you said, it may be silently hidden from everyone.

Okay! If you change your mind, you're welcome to give this place another try.

Maybe you appoint a janny team that turns out to all be trans, and they start shadowbanning anyone who questions transdeology.

Then I boot them and find new moderators. Seriously, the userbase has never been shy about complaining about moderators, and I have booted moderators before (okay, moderator.)

I just don't understand how groups that have been run off of reddit can still be drawn to strong moderation.

Because nobody has managed to make a good serious discussion site without strong moderation.

If you think it's possible, I encourage you to prove me wrong and do it. But I'm not convinced it's possible.

In my opinion, shadowbans are an appropriate measure in only two circumstances:

  1. the target is a bot, not a real human

  2. the target is an alt who is attempting to evade regular public bans

Precisely because these are cases where a real ban is ineffective because the target will just try again with new accounts repeatedly, and the shadowness helps prevent them from knowing it's necessary. Shadowbanning a real human for regular rule breaking is sinister and evil, the only purpose it serves is to reduce transparency for mod decisions.

I'm willing to use it during periods of high new-troll activity; if there's a bunch of people making new accounts just to post bad stuff then I'll simply remove it. In a day or two we can turn the standard activity filters on, though, and that'll help things enormously.

actually maybe I should just turn those on now.

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