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
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)