It wastes shadowbanned person’s time, so it’s not.
Similar to vote obfuscation.
Which sucks just as badly.
Comment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sues Meta, citing chatbot’s reply as evidence of shadowban
teft@lemmy.world 4 months agoShadowbans help prevent bot activity by preventing a bot from knowing if what they posted was actually posted. Similar to vote obfuscation. It wastes bot’s time so it’s a good thing.
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
teft@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Don’t post shit that gets you shadowbanned. Problem solved.
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
That’s a good solution for you, but some of us don’t generally bend over to assholes.
And that’s not serious. You’ll get shadowbanned for any kind of stuff somebody with that ability wants to shadowban you for. You won’t know the reason and what to avoid.
I got shadowbanned on Reddit a few times for basically repeating the 1988 resolution of the European Parliament on Artsakh (the one in support of reunification with Armenia).
teft@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Don’t hang out in spaces that don’t align with your beliefs.
I was on reddit for 15 years and never caught a ban and I’m not exactly a demure person. If you go to an anti vax thread (this is an example since i know nothing of armenia) and post stuff about vaccination, even it’s 100% factual, it’s not surprising when you catch a ban.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
So just don’t commit thought crime against Big Brother and you’ll be good?
When a platform gets to a certain size, we need to consider its effects on society as a whole. Hiding undesirable content and promoting desirable content can be a monopolistic practice for the org to get outsized impact on things it finds important. Whether that’s “good” or “bad” depends on how closely that org’s interests are aligned with the average person.
I, for one, do not think Meta’s interests are aligned with my own, so I think it’s bad that they have so much sway that they can steer the public discourse through their ranking algorithm. Shadowbanning is just another way for the platform to get their desired message out.
Instead of trying to restrict yourself to only posting what the platform wants you to post, you should be seeking alternatives that allow you to post what you think is valuable to post.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Truth is treason in the Empire of Lies
kava@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I’ve seen reddit accounts who regularly posted comments for months all at +1 vote and never received any response or reply at all because nobody had ever seen their comments. They got hit with some automod shadowban they were yelling into the void, likely wondering why nobody ever felt they deserved to be heard.
I find this unsettling and unethical. I think people have a right to be heard and deceiving people like this feels wrong.
There are other methods to deal with spam that aren’t potentially harmful.
There’s also an entirely different discussion about shadowbans being a way to silence specific forms of speech. Today it may be crazies or hateful speech, but it can easily be any subversive speech should the administration change.
I agree with other commenter, it probably shouldn’t be allowed.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I have not seen anything to support the theory that shadowbans reduce the number of bots on a platform. If anything, a sophisticated account run by professional engagement farmers is going to know it’s been shadowbanned - and know how to mitigate the ban - more easily than an amateur publisher producing sincere content. The latter is far more likely to run afoul of an difficult-to-detect ban than the former.
A bot has far more time to waste than a human. So this technique is biased against humans, rather than bots.
If you want to discourage bots, put public metrics behind a captcha. That’s far more effective than undermining visibility in a way only a professional would notice.
Dkarma@lemmy.world 4 months ago
They never said shadow bans reduce the number of bots on a platform Classic straw man.