Shadowbanning is an extremely evil and inhumane practice that should be discontinued if it is still done, not just here but anywhere. Human beings need to be treated like human beings, at least deserving of a regular ban. If you don't understand, then wait until it happens to you.
We use shadowbanning (i.e. banning an account without saying so) in specific cases such as spammers and serial trolls. I don't think that's inhumane. In the case of spammers, telling them would only lead to more spam. As for serial trolls, they are usually aware of which of their stable of accounts have been banned yet vs. not.
But when you say "wait until it happens to you", I'm curious if that means that we banned one of your accounts without telling you so? It would be interesting to look up, if so.
If there is an established history of at least two prior accounts of an identity being banned via a regular ban in the last two years, I can then see the justifiable reason for a shadow ban. Without these strict criteria, I think it doesn't give the person a sufficient opportunity to remediate.
I have heard from users having as many as a thousand karma points that were shadowbanned without warning.
Fwiw, I do not have any other account on this site, and I haven't had any other account since this account was created. I had a different account many years ago, the login for which I had fully lost.
> I have heard from users having as many as a thousand karma points that were shadowbanned without warning
I don't think that can be true, at least not in the last 12 years. Far more likely is that someone incorrectly concluded that they were shadowbanned. But if anyone wants us to check a specific username, we'd be happy to do so.
People come to all kinds of mistaken conclusions, especially when they're upset about something that we or someone else did on HN. Self-reports of this kind, especially about being banned, are mostly unreliable.
though there must have been backroom warnings, the disappearance of breckyunits feels a bit Soviet
Considered that it seems intellectually valuable (~nontrivially eutriptic) for an outsider or breck(/g?????m) to understand what part of his value system was diametrically opposed to the spirit of HNtopia
The humaneness seemed at worst ambiguous but that's not the issue.. maybe self-compassion was?
Breck is well aware of the status of his account on HN, so this was not a case of shadowbanning.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42013861">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42013861 was the end of a painfully lengthy process, not all of which was public.
By Soviet I meant more of inscrutability: [unsatisfactory] window into _why_ someone was thrown out of a window, not how.
Apparently that "unsatisfactory" does have (imagined) personal component for me. The process, for you, was less imagined.. so.. okay. I should be more careful next time
« We use shadowbanning (i.e. banning an account without saying so) in specific cases such as spammers and serial trolls. »
All my comments are stillborn, dead by default. I guess that means shadowbanning has been applied. I'm neither a spammer nor a serial troll. Some people flagged my comments, and the more substantive and factful they were, the more they seemed¹ to be flagged. Some people appear to have licence to drive their political agendas, and others who oppose these views are charged with “trampling curiosity”. HN does not seem to live up to its purported ideals.
[1] There is zero transparency so I cannot see who flagged what how much. What I can see is that the more substantive a comment is the higher the risk it runs of being flagged and made invisible, which practically means automatized censorship (not calling it such would be hairsplitting).
Your account wasn't banned per se but software was killing your posts. I realize that's not much of a distinction when your posts are getting killed, but from our side the difference is significant.
> I'm neither a spammer nor a serial troll
Ok, but when you break the site guidelines (e.g. "Incredibly stupid and misleading comment of yours, slily insinuating" - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49670568">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49670568), and use HN primarily for political/ideological battle—which the guidelines ask commenters not to do [1], and which is a line at which we start banning [2]—it ends up amounting to the same thing.
Having skimmed your comments, I have mixed feelings about how the system [3] functioned here. On the one hand, you have been breaking the site guidelines and not using HN as intended. From that point of view, the software wasn't wrong.
On the other hand, your account was arguing for contrarian positions which caused it to get penalized by the community (which by definition disagrees with those), and eventually by the software, more than it would have if you did not have a minority view.
From an HN point of view, this is a thorny patch. We want to hold space for minority views and have no taste for the smugness of majorities, nor the brutal way they behave when contradicted. We know that creative ideas tend to come from uncommon sources, and since such things are what HN exists for, it would be foolish to cut those short. We want the long tails of most distributions to extend longer here than they get to do amid the large-group dynamics of most places online.
But was also need HN discussions to remain intellectually curious and not degenerate into flamewars. The trouble is that users with minority views are often the ones setting fires and stoking flames. They come into a discussion already feeling embattled and surrounded, and start out swinging. This pre-emptive hostility obviously has a defensive function. It is understandable when people have a background of seeing their views being silenced or treated unfairly. But it guarantees an aggressive response from the majority.
When that response inevitably comes, the minority account often then retreats into righteous indignation about being censored, banned, or squashed. But would they have been squashed if they had expressed themselves more neutrally and with more relational capacity? It's hard to say; they rarely try.
We want HN to be a space where minority views have a fair chance, but we can't have people breaking the site guidelines with flamewar, battle rhetoric, and so on, regardless of their views. We do try to cut them more slack than if they were coming from a dominant position—that's why I'm replying to you at such length—but not so much that we'd end up with two sets of rules.
In the end, we often have to ban such accounts despite knowing how difficult it is to take a minority position and in that respect sympathizing with the account holders—not because we agree-or-disagree with their views but because they're so clearly breaking the rules.
I've posted about this many times [4], usually in a context where I see this dynamic showing up and want to try to help by explaining it. What a minority view-holder needs to do differently, if they want a different outcome, is to remain neutral, resist the temptation to lash out, and field the majority responses (which are often rather shallow and predictable) with some understanding of where people are coming from, and how difficult (and even frightening) it might be to give even an inch on the topic.
What this means is that there is a greater burden on people holding a minority position [5]. It may be unfair, but it's intrinsic to how majorities and minorities interact.
Thank you for your comprehensive, cirumspect and considerate comment, thanks for overruling “the system” and resetting my -16 “karma” score.
Of course I understand the problem about minority and majority positions. Creating majorities, minoritizing dissent, and inciting the (gregarious) majority to actively trample opposition (by mere quantity, not quality; by mass and weight, not argument or intellect) is the bread and butter of how propaganda works and operates. It cannot ever succeed in convincing everybody, but it can succeed in effectively shutting down opposition, which is the purpose.
As for my comment 49670568 (“Incredibly stupid …”), if you read it in context with parent and gp 49668588, you'll see I was echoing to Rob's “Incredibly arrogant/racist take” wrt to Adrian, whose comments I'd been subscribed to via RSS for a couple months prior to creating an HN account, and whom I've never seen posting anything akin to what Rob alleged, and so I was simply taking Adrian's defense (because I felt someone had to).
True, there was a provocative angle to my comment in the last two paragraphs, exacerbated perhaps by being also analytical. People from the US, in my experience, often don't realize how arrogant their self-content attitude in political matters comes across based on how much the US is trampling on other countries (and by trampling I mean to kill and destroy, to cheat and deceive, to plunder and tax, and then to justify or deny).
« The trouble is that users with minority views are often the ones setting fires and stoking flames. » — I usually try to remain factual. Trouble is, facts often are not welcome because psychologically and psychosocially, persuasions dictated by propaganda prevail, and there is pressure to “conform” and “comply”, and to even dismiss dissenters as “whacky” (example 49711252, in context 49708657).
« But would they have been squashed if they had expressed themselves more neutrally and with more relational capacity? It's hard to say; they rarely try. » — I will try. But I have to say that the majority view is very often expressed “in battle mode”, like the bully making it clear there can be no other view, which, again, is simply the result of how propaganda works, by creating the vocabulary and talking points (“global war on terror”, you might remember, “Russian annexation of Crimea”, “pilot suicide”, “Hamas terror”, “Russian war of aggression”), which then are repeated over and over again, and have to be repeated precisely because they are either total lies or meant to suppress the true story, which is much more complex.
« where people are coming from, and how difficult (and even frightening) it might be to give even an inch on the topic » — Yes, I know, a lot of people are frightened, which is also an effect of propaganda. Some, however, and these are the most vocal, do enjoy being in the majority because they enjoy trampling, which could be observed and experienced in real life during the CoVID hoax.
« there is a greater burden on people holding a minority position » — I can see this is the pragmatic conclusion that I would probably also arrive at from your vantage point.
Thanks again for taking the time to elaborate on this meta topic (which I understand is the mainstay topic for you). I might include a reference to your statement in future controversial comments I might make so it gets a chance to be considered by a wider audience.
Finally, on a meta level, the field of propaganda and psychology is interesting in its own right, an important part of social (or perhaps rather post-social) life as shaped by technological mass media, and therefore certainly not unworthy of many a hacker's curiosity, attention, and perhaps even investigation. — Best, Michael
OutOfHere · · focus · HN ↗
dang · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22banned%20this%20account%22&sort=byDate&type=comment" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
We use shadowbanning (i.e. banning an account without saying so) in specific cases such as spammers and serial trolls. I don't think that's inhumane. In the case of spammers, telling them would only lead to more spam. As for serial trolls, they are usually aware of which of their stable of accounts have been banned yet vs. not.
<a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20shadowban&sort=byDate&type=comment" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
But when you say "wait until it happens to you", I'm curious if that means that we banned one of your accounts without telling you so? It would be interesting to look up, if so.
OutOfHere · · focus · HN ↗
I have heard from users having as many as a thousand karma points that were shadowbanned without warning.
Fwiw, I do not have any other account on this site, and I haven't had any other account since this account was created. I had a different account many years ago, the login for which I had fully lost.
dang · · focus · HN ↗
I don't think that can be true, at least not in the last 12 years. Far more likely is that someone incorrectly concluded that they were shadowbanned. But if anyone wants us to check a specific username, we'd be happy to do so.
People come to all kinds of mistaken conclusions, especially when they're upset about something that we or someone else did on HN. Self-reports of this kind, especially about being banned, are mostly unreliable.
oliculipolicula · · focus · HN ↗
Considered that it seems intellectually valuable (~nontrivially eutriptic) for an outsider or breck(/g?????m) to understand what part of his value system was diametrically opposed to the spirit of HNtopia
The humaneness seemed at worst ambiguous but that's not the issue.. maybe self-compassion was?
dang · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42013861">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42013861 was the end of a painfully lengthy process, not all of which was public.
oliculipolicula · · focus · HN ↗
Apparently that "unsatisfactory" does have (imagined) personal component for me. The process, for you, was less imagined.. so.. okay. I should be more careful next time
oliculipolicula · · focus · HN ↗
Now I remember benreesman.. but maybe the last flagged comment is beyond my search-fu?
(I remember these two oldtimers because I sympathize with their "far-left" anticorpo yet agentic vibes)
Lumich · · focus · HN ↗
All my comments are stillborn, dead by default. I guess that means shadowbanning has been applied. I'm neither a spammer nor a serial troll. Some people flagged my comments, and the more substantive and factful they were, the more they seemed¹ to be flagged. Some people appear to have licence to drive their political agendas, and others who oppose these views are charged with “trampling curiosity”. HN does not seem to live up to its purported ideals.
[1] There is zero transparency so I cannot see who flagged what how much. What I can see is that the more substantive a comment is the higher the risk it runs of being flagged and made invisible, which practically means automatized censorship (not calling it such would be hairsplitting).
dang · · focus · HN ↗
> I'm neither a spammer nor a serial troll
Ok, but when you break the site guidelines (e.g. "Incredibly stupid and misleading comment of yours, slily insinuating" - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49670568">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49670568), and use HN primarily for political/ideological battle—which the guidelines ask commenters not to do [1], and which is a line at which we start banning [2]—it ends up amounting to the same thing.
Having skimmed your comments, I have mixed feelings about how the system [3] functioned here. On the one hand, you have been breaking the site guidelines and not using HN as intended. From that point of view, the software wasn't wrong.
On the other hand, your account was arguing for contrarian positions which caused it to get penalized by the community (which by definition disagrees with those), and eventually by the software, more than it would have if you did not have a minority view.
From an HN point of view, this is a thorny patch. We want to hold space for minority views and have no taste for the smugness of majorities, nor the brutal way they behave when contradicted. We know that creative ideas tend to come from uncommon sources, and since such things are what HN exists for, it would be foolish to cut those short. We want the long tails of most distributions to extend longer here than they get to do amid the large-group dynamics of most places online.
But was also need HN discussions to remain intellectually curious and not degenerate into flamewars. The trouble is that users with minority views are often the ones setting fires and stoking flames. They come into a discussion already feeling embattled and surrounded, and start out swinging. This pre-emptive hostility obviously has a defensive function. It is understandable when people have a background of seeing their views being silenced or treated unfairly. But it guarantees an aggressive response from the majority.
When that response inevitably comes, the minority account often then retreats into righteous indignation about being censored, banned, or squashed. But would they have been squashed if they had expressed themselves more neutrally and with more relational capacity? It's hard to say; they rarely try.
We want HN to be a space where minority views have a fair chance, but we can't have people breaking the site guidelines with flamewar, battle rhetoric, and so on, regardless of their views. We do try to cut them more slack than if they were coming from a dominant position—that's why I'm replying to you at such length—but not so much that we'd end up with two sets of rules.
In the end, we often have to ban such accounts despite knowing how difficult it is to take a minority position and in that respect sympathizing with the account holders—not because we agree-or-disagree with their views but because they're so clearly breaking the rules.
I've posted about this many times [4], usually in a context where I see this dynamic showing up and want to try to help by explaining it. What a minority view-holder needs to do differently, if they want a different outcome, is to remain neutral, resist the temptation to lash out, and field the majority responses (which are often rather shallow and predictable) with some understanding of where people are coming from, and how difficult (and even frightening) it might be to give even an inch on the topic.
What this means is that there is a greater burden on people holding a minority position [5]. It may be unfair, but it's intrinsic to how majorities and minorities interact.
[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[2] <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
[3] By "the system" I mean the entire system of Hacker News: community, software, and moderators.
[4] <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20minority%20view&sort=byDate&type=comment" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[5] <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22greater%20burden%22&sort=byDate&type=comment" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Lumich · · focus · HN ↗
Of course I understand the problem about minority and majority positions. Creating majorities, minoritizing dissent, and inciting the (gregarious) majority to actively trample opposition (by mere quantity, not quality; by mass and weight, not argument or intellect) is the bread and butter of how propaganda works and operates. It cannot ever succeed in convincing everybody, but it can succeed in effectively shutting down opposition, which is the purpose.
As for my comment 49670568 (“Incredibly stupid …”), if you read it in context with parent and gp 49668588, you'll see I was echoing to Rob's “Incredibly arrogant/racist take” wrt to Adrian, whose comments I'd been subscribed to via RSS for a couple months prior to creating an HN account, and whom I've never seen posting anything akin to what Rob alleged, and so I was simply taking Adrian's defense (because I felt someone had to).
True, there was a provocative angle to my comment in the last two paragraphs, exacerbated perhaps by being also analytical. People from the US, in my experience, often don't realize how arrogant their self-content attitude in political matters comes across based on how much the US is trampling on other countries (and by trampling I mean to kill and destroy, to cheat and deceive, to plunder and tax, and then to justify or deny).
« The trouble is that users with minority views are often the ones setting fires and stoking flames. » — I usually try to remain factual. Trouble is, facts often are not welcome because psychologically and psychosocially, persuasions dictated by propaganda prevail, and there is pressure to “conform” and “comply”, and to even dismiss dissenters as “whacky” (example 49711252, in context 49708657).
« But would they have been squashed if they had expressed themselves more neutrally and with more relational capacity? It's hard to say; they rarely try. » — I will try. But I have to say that the majority view is very often expressed “in battle mode”, like the bully making it clear there can be no other view, which, again, is simply the result of how propaganda works, by creating the vocabulary and talking points (“global war on terror”, you might remember, “Russian annexation of Crimea”, “pilot suicide”, “Hamas terror”, “Russian war of aggression”), which then are repeated over and over again, and have to be repeated precisely because they are either total lies or meant to suppress the true story, which is much more complex.
« where people are coming from, and how difficult (and even frightening) it might be to give even an inch on the topic » — Yes, I know, a lot of people are frightened, which is also an effect of propaganda. Some, however, and these are the most vocal, do enjoy being in the majority because they enjoy trampling, which could be observed and experienced in real life during the CoVID hoax.
« there is a greater burden on people holding a minority position » — I can see this is the pragmatic conclusion that I would probably also arrive at from your vantage point.
Thanks again for taking the time to elaborate on this meta topic (which I understand is the mainstay topic for you). I might include a reference to your statement in future controversial comments I might make so it gets a chance to be considered by a wider audience.
Finally, on a meta level, the field of propaganda and psychology is interesting in its own right, an important part of social (or perhaps rather post-social) life as shaped by technological mass media, and therefore certainly not unworthy of many a hacker's curiosity, attention, and perhaps even investigation. — Best, Michael