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FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

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Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#371

Post by vidarh »

pseudo0 wrote: post #253
ericbarrett wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've moderated a forum before. Some people on the Internet are just crazy . If you ban them, they will come after you—maybe even in person. Shadowbanning on forums (setting aside the FB case) is sometimes abused, but it serves a vital purpose: preserving the time and safety of volunteer moderators.

Don't they just get twice as annoyed when they realize that not only were they banned, but they were silently banned and wasted time writing posts that went straight to /dev/null? The only time shadowbanning seems like a good solution is outright commercial spam and link farming, where slowing them down is a win in itself.

Surprisingly if you browse HN with "showdead" on, you'll find quite a few people don't realise. Others realise but keep posting comments they know most people won't read (you can tell in some cases because occasionally someone will mention their ban in comments).

(I browse with showdead on because the volume is small on HN, and every now and again you come across people in the former category who were shadowbanned for one or a few incidents relatively far in the past, who since then seem to have acted reasonable, where it's worth pointing it out so they can appeal their ban - mostly the flagged comments or shadowbans are well deserved, though)

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#372

Post by [deleted] »

graeme wrote: post #48
blunte wrote: post #18

It's one thing to censor, but it's another to intentionally deceive your users into believing that they sent something.

Hacker News does it. Reddit does it sitewide. Individual moderators do it sitewide. Shadowbanning is an essential tool for moderation, for dealing with trolls, spammers, abusive people. You can argue the tool is being used too widely by Facebook, but it is silly to pontificate against the practice as a whole. You reaaaaallly would not like the uncensored internet.

[deleted]

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#373

Post by iamacyborg »

rnd0 wrote: post #350
iamacyborg wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everything seems to have coalescened (socially speaking) into twitter and facebook. And Reddit and Discord. It is a monumentally difficult task to create a forum these days, from a social PoV.

>It is a monumentally difficult task to create a forum these days, from a social PoV. and legal, and probably technical PoV as well; yes. The large platforms have sucked all of the oxygen out of the room, and have gained what I feel is an unhealthy control of what can and cannot be said. I have no idea what can be done to fix the situation; but none the less, there it is.

From a technical perspective, forum software is easy enough to use.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#374

Post by herbst »

bobthechef wrote: post #198
bagels wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Shadow banning isn’t really something used in private messages, no?

Facebook is doing this for a while. Pretty sure they always checked privately sent links. Some years ago I sent a .tk domain to a few friends and it got shadow banner after a few minutes (it was a harmless meme site).

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#375

Post by pndy »

gscott wrote: post #244

Speaking of FB censoring. They now censor my ability to "Like" or react it is fairly random. I will click like on something then Facebook opens a popup that says that I cannot like or react to posts because they will my liking has been harmful to others. Facebook has become unusable. I haven't posted in over a year but they have found new ways to censor.

> I will click like on something then Facebook opens a popup that says that I cannot like or react to posts because they will my liking has been harmful to others

Do you have this on screenshot by any chance or can you make one? It seems way too ridiculous and out of place - but then, I stopped using fb few years ago so things could "change"

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#376

Post by stouset »

ionwake wrote: post #365
stouset wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have missed it in your rush to downvote me.

I did not downvote you at all, I replied because I wanted to discuss it with you. Others have replied, and I think its really interesting you think an unruly playground needs to be moderated. Others have pointed out you just "go to your corner" or dont engage so to speak. But you seem to think it needs to be moderated. I am not saying you are wrong I 'm curious as to why.

The problem is that I can “go to my corner” but I can’t stop people with no intention of playing by any set of rules from coming with me.

We’ve gone to our own corner here on Hacker News. And yet there’s moderation to keep discussion on-topic and respectful. In my estimation you likely choose to participate in this corner of the Internet because of the moderation of both link submissions and comments. Without it, HN would devolve into a cesspool over time like every other attempt at unmoderated forums that’s been tried. Well-meaning participants would be driven out by trolls, spammers, and angry people with an axe to grind.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#377

Post by beezischillin »

Any user of any Facebook property needs to understand well in advance that the company engages in active psychological manipulation and experimentation on its users and then decide if this clashes with their personal autonomy.

Remember them talking about how they engaged in experiments on their users by trying to influence their mood via intentionally showing their various groups different types of content algorithmically on their news feed? Or when they intentionally kept crashing their Android app to see what’s their user retention rate even on faulty software? Or just open up the app on two phones of the exact similar make and model and see the app menu?

My personal anecdote and experience with this is that they also use random errors to disguise bans. I have a personal and a dev account which I made the first time I accidentally got banned for 24 hours because it also reset OAuth app keys, the next time I got banned I logged in to my dev acct. and tried to make a post, since they managed to associate the two accounts, I ended up banned on that one, too. But it didn’t say that, it kept throwing random errors as if it was only a backend issue. These disappeared once my main ban was gone.

So all in all my point is, people should understand that the platform outright does these kinds of things and use or find alternatives based on that

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#378

Post by rnd0 »

iamacyborg wrote: post #373
rnd0 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is a monumentally difficult task to create a forum these days, from a social PoV. and legal, and probably technical PoV as well; yes. The large platforms have sucked all of the oxygen out of the room, and have gained what I feel is an unhealthy control of what can and cannot be said. I have no idea what can be done to fix the situation; but none the less, there it is.

From a technical perspective, forum software is easy enough to use.

A technical perspective also includes mitigating denial of service attacks and other security issues, including scaling.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#379

Post by JasonFruit »

tqi wrote: post #301
JasonFruit wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I would say so.

TBH that absolutist position feels untenable. Unmoderated platforms are quickly overrun by objectionable content, and easily usurped by moderated competitors. The only way to force this would be through legislation, and I just think there is no way that the majority of people can be convinced to support/vote for that position.

That's true of communities involving large groups of people; this is Facebook Messenger, which is mostly used for one-on-one or small-group chat, like SMS. SMS is not generally overrun with objectionable content, even though it is mostly unmoderated.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#380

Post by mark_l_watson »

beezischillin wrote: post #377

Any user of any Facebook property needs to understand well in advance that the company engages in active psychological manipulation and experimentation on its users and then decide if this clashes with their personal autonomy. Remember them talking about how they engaged in experiments on their users by trying to influence their mood via intentionally showing their various groups different types of content algorithmi…

I agree with you. I feel caught in a trap though: I really like the Oculus VR platform. I use it everyday to play quick games if ping pong or racket ball when I need to move around after sitting in my desk chair. Sometimes I spend more time on the Star Wars games, etc. But, as you say, I try to use their VR platform with some awareness of their business model.
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