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I think that ghostbanning is unethical

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I think that ghostbanning is unethical

#31

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

smt88 wrote: post #9

Shadowbanning has two obvious benefits for the site: 1) Increases the time it takes trolls to realize they need to create a new account. 2) Pacifies angry, malicious users who might escalate their bad behavior when instantly banned. I haven't seen HN use shadowbanning to censor anyone. The people who are shadowbanned all seem to post unhinged, profane, off-topic, content-free rants. Personally, I think it makes the c…

>I haven't seen HN use shadowbanning to censor anyone.

I have been. ( I would be surprised if you did see this message). Profile of the banned account is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dennis_jeeves

Re: I think that ghostbanning is unethical

#33

Post by Fatnino »

dennis_jeeves1 wrote: post #31
smt88 wrote: post #9

Shadowbanning has two obvious benefits for the site: 1) Increases the time it takes trolls to realize they need to create a new account. 2) Pacifies angry, malicious users who might escalate their bad behavior when instantly banned. I haven't seen HN use shadowbanning to censor anyone. The people who are shadowbanned all seem to post unhinged, profane, off-topic, content-free rants. Personally, I think it makes the c…

>I haven't seen HN use shadowbanning to censor anyone. I have been. ( I would be surprised if you did see this message). Profile of the banned account is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dennis_jeeves

This one showed up

Re: I think that ghostbanning is unethical

#34

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

Fatnino wrote: post #33
dennis_jeeves1 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I haven't seen HN use shadowbanning to censor anyone. I have been. ( I would be surprised if you did see this message). Profile of the banned account is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dennis_jeeves

This one showed up

Thanks Fatnino for confirming it showed up.

While I appreciate the complexity, effort and pains of what Dang and PG are doing there is some evidence that they are sensitive souls, and cannot stand even polite personal criticism. I cannot be sure of this however.

Re: I think that ghostbanning is unethical

#35

Post by smt88 »

dennis_jeeves1 wrote: post #34
Fatnino wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one showed up

Thanks Fatnino for confirming it showed up. While I appreciate the complexity, effort and pains of what Dang and PG are doing there is some evidence that they are sensitive souls, and cannot stand even polite personal criticism. I cannot be sure of this however.

I've personally criticized dang and he has responded without banning me. PG is an arrogant clown, and I've criticized him many times without incident. He seems to have nothing to do with this site anymore.

I looked at your comment history, and my guess is that you were banned for certain rants and health conspiracies, like this one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28100359

Re: I think that ghostbanning is unethical

#36

Post by Normille »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #32

This is why I always read HN with Show Dead turned on. Often, dead comments are the most interesting and thought-provoking in a thread.

Even there though, the dead comments are rendered in a light grey font which is so close to the background colour as to make them pretty much unreadable [for me anyway]. Even highlighting the almost-hidden text doesn't help much as the highlight colour is similar in brightness to the grey text.

That smacks of churlishness to me. 'You can choose to show dead comments if you want, but the site will still make it difficult for you to read them'.

I always mean to add something to my *monkey scripts to render the dead comments in a visible colour. But it's not the most motivating issue in my intarwebs browsing. So I've not bothered yet.

Re: I think that ghostbanning is unethical

#37

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

smt88 wrote: post #35
dennis_jeeves1 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks Fatnino for confirming it showed up. While I appreciate the complexity, effort and pains of what Dang and PG are doing there is some evidence that they are sensitive souls, and cannot stand even polite personal criticism. I cannot be sure of this however.

I've personally criticized dang and he has responded without banning me. PG is an arrogant clown, and I've criticized him many times without incident. He seems to have nothing to do with this site anymore. I looked at your comment history, and my guess is that you were banned for certain rants and health conspiracies, like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28100359

If you are indeed correct, surely they think that the average HN user is an idiot that needs to shielded from my 'stupid' post. Either that or I'm adding too much noise to the discussion in which case I suspect that technically it may be challenge to add a feature where an individual reader can have the ability to "mute" comments from people that he/she does not wish to see, but others may continue seeing it.

Re: I think that ghostbanning is unethical

#38

Post by smt88 »

dennis_jeeves1 wrote: post #37
smt88 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally criticized dang and he has responded without banning me. PG is an arrogant clown, and I've criticized him many times without incident. He seems to have nothing to do with this site anymore. I looked at your comment history, and my guess is that you were banned for certain rants and health conspiracies, like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28100359

If you are indeed correct, surely they think that the average HN user is an idiot that needs to shielded from my 'stupid' post. Either that or I'm adding too much noise to the discussion in which case I suspect that technically it may be challenge to add a feature where an individual reader can have the ability to "mute" comments from people that he/she does not wish to see, but others may continue seeing it.

I don't think you got banned for writing stupid posts. It's that they hinted at easily-disproven conspiracy theories, which (as you mentioned) is noisy. But on top of that, your tone was often curt, condescending, and not particularly curious, which I'm sure made other users hostile to you and inclined to flag your posts.

Re: I think that ghostbanning is unethical

#39

Post by smt88 »

mah4k4l wrote: post #16
smt88 wrote: post #9

Shadowbanning has two obvious benefits for the site: 1) Increases the time it takes trolls to realize they need to create a new account. 2) Pacifies angry, malicious users who might escalate their bad behavior when instantly banned. I haven't seen HN use shadowbanning to censor anyone. The people who are shadowbanned all seem to post unhinged, profane, off-topic, content-free rants. Personally, I think it makes the c…

> I haven't seen HN use shadowbanning to censor anyone. Maybe it was the ones you didn't see? Bacause they were shadowbanned? My post was about ethics, trying to be formal and simple about the question what is it to do the right thing. Basically it was about this: sometimes good is right, sometimes evil is right, so good can be wrong and evil can be right, and we have four things of which the main question is the que…

> I wouldn't consider myself to be a "toxic personality" but being ghostbanned did piss me off a little.

Being pissed off is a very reasonable emotion to being shadowbanned.

I'm sure you don't consider yourself toxic, but it's possible you were posting things that trolls or shills often post, and that resulted in you getting banned.

For example, there may be people astroturfing anti-vaccine misinformation on this site. Given public opinion polls and the revelations about all the money that goes into that movement, it's likely most anti-vaccine activism on the internet is made up of bots and paid astroturfers.

But if you're someone who genuinely believes the conspiracy theories, a site may end up banning you because you're indistinguishable from people are not sincere and not acting in good faith.

Any filter is going to have false positives, but that doesn't mean we should throw out the filter.

Re: I think that ghostbanning is unethical

#40

Post by Mandatum »

smt88 wrote: post #9

Shadowbanning has two obvious benefits for the site: 1) Increases the time it takes trolls to realize they need to create a new account. 2) Pacifies angry, malicious users who might escalate their bad behavior when instantly banned. I haven't seen HN use shadowbanning to censor anyone. The people who are shadowbanned all seem to post unhinged, profane, off-topic, content-free rants. Personally, I think it makes the c…

I have been.
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