FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

>You say that as if it's fact, but I'm not sure it is.

How is it not? Shadowbans by definition are deceptive; their whole intent is to deceive the poster into thinking that their message was sent and is readable.

If you post and your message appears to appear on the thread but only you can read it then...you are being deceived. The message board software is lying to you.

Since it is the moderators who decide that then it's the relationship between you (the poster) and the moderators that determines whether or not your post actually successfully completes or if you're being lied to.

That is what I mean when I say that shadowbans inject a factor of deceit into the poster/moderator relationship.

It's possible to argue that it doesn't, but it's also possible to argue that the moon is made of green cheese as well. Neither argument is the truth.

>There are places in the internet you can go to make sure you are heard and you can say whatever you want.

And there are places where if you are banned, you know it; if your comment is removed, you know it. My qualm in this thread is about the deceptive practice of shadowbanning.

> If you prefer to post here instead of there, then some examination on why that is might be warranted, and specifically whether the thing you are complaining about helps or hinders making this place somewhere you feel worth spending time.

May I ask -was it your intent to come off as being condescending and borderline insulting? If not, you ought to be aware that is how that sentence came off. And I'll tell you for nothing that being talked down to after spending 25 years on the internet does NOT contribute positively towards HN being a place worth spending time in.

It's also a hand-wave -meaning a distraction from my primary point which is about shadowbanning and the fact it injects a note of deceit into the moderator/user relationship.

There are pluses and minuses to everything; good points and bad points. Obviously since I will continue posting in HN I see more positive points than negative ones -but that does not change the fact ...and it is a fact... that I believe (and have no reason not to believe) that shadowbans have a negative effect on the larger community that they're practiced on. They make HN a place less worth coming to, and the fact that there are positives reasons to come to HN does not change that.

So -to long didn't read summary; shadowbans undermine posters' faith in moderators and serve to undermine the credibility of moderation as a whole.

Right or not, I think charitably, the person you are responding to is pointing out that this is not a new thing in social media sites. It's a decades old technique at this point.

I don't think you’re wrong in pointing out that the internet is likely more homogenous the further back in time we go. It’s a hard thing to be wrong about with respect to any scene. But I don't think I agree that it means that we must bend on principles of freedom of expression, digital civil liberties, and anti-censorship and anti-central control. And if definitely doesn't mean the internet wasn't possibly still the most diverse place on the planet even shortly after its inception. Now that the internet has taken the world stage, we must continually fight and push for the society we want to build, for what’s right, really. We must educate and in certain ways indoctrinate. Otherwise we risk losing our values to the swaths of normies—especially now that other cultures are vying for their own version of comfortable.

That's an almost impossibly broad question to answer.

In the context of this conversation? Moderation is evil because it is destructive, repressive, exploitable for the cause of tyranny (eg silencing dissent) and is the opposite of that which is good (freedom of expression, freedom of thought, free flow of information).

Like any other violence, there are times when it's warrented but it's always a balance. The greater good is to keep the forum open, so it's necessary to remove illegal materials. And that's an easy call when what is illegal is child pornography; but what about when what is illegal is a political message or even just a series of seemingly random numbers?

Sometimes it's the lesser evil (child porn is always the greater evil) and sometimes moderation is the greater evil (repressing political messages or being used in the service of propping up totalitarian regimes).

I apologize if this doesn't make things clearer for you. As I said at the beginning; the nature of evil is a broad question that has been wrestled by philosophers for millennia.

Australians are building concentration camps as we speak.

You sure you want to be on the wrong side of history?