FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

> So users are okay with being deceived and ultimately don’t care? Let me know if I’ve misunderstood your argument.

Users that expect moderation expect a certain level of housekeeping and don't care if they are exposed to it all, and I would guess a great many don't want to be bothered with it.

The important distinction here is that being shadowbanned is being excluded from the community, and is done to even more effectively keep these people away from and out of the community than just regular banning would accomplish. The community expects to see content from the rest of the community, these people aren't part of that group, regardless of whether they still have an account and can log it, so the amount of deception to the community is little to none.

The alternative to shadowbanning is not letting they people post, it's banning. The effective desired outcome in both cases is that this person no longer is allowed to be part of the community. The effective actual outcome is that regular banning often just results in people making a new account and continuing with the same behavior. The only deception of shadowbanning to the community is that you're not explicitly saying "hey, these posts we tried to stop from being made? We're letting them be made but just hiding them from view, since we don't want them here in the first place."

If I'm going to get mad about that I might as well get mad at the police or a business owner for taking down some banner that was hung illegally across other businesses that I would see on my commute if they didn't act fast enough. Would I feel deceived that people had his some random message someone decided to put up that was unwanted was removed without me being able to see it? No.

> I disagree that it’s a morally acceptable way to moderate a community or forum, though.

If every forum was like that I might agree. But groups of people have the right to choose how to police themselves and there are plenty of other communities out there that do it differently.

> People lose trust when they find they’ve been shadowbanned

Those people are being kicked out. The community, or the mods, want them to lose trust and leave in most cases. I don't worry that someone I think deserves to be in jail is disillusioned because they don't think they deserve to be in jail. Or, if I worry about it, it's not in a way that makes me think they don't deserve the punishment.

> or discover that the practice is used.

I think that's very few people.

> They rightfully understand that the discourse is being manipulated in an underhanded, opaque way.

All moderation is this, whether done by the few with extra powers or outsourced to the crowd. Moderation is censorship. Censorship isn't always bad (like most things in like, it's a matter of extremes being the problem. Too little or too much both have issues, so we generally fluctuate as a society around a sort of middle area).

You can call it underhanded and opaque all you want, but it's only that to those that have already been excised from the community. To everyone else, it's really no different than if that person was banned, except they're less likely to come back for a while.

You foster and shape a community by first telling people what you will accept and then by banning people whose behavior doesn't comport with standards. Here we sit on a functional community with such standards discussing this matter politely with one another wherein your argument would be to remove the standards that make this community worth chatting on.

Just because you and are I reasonable doesn't mean the overarching internet is. It's manifestly not. It's extremely likely that a large part of the signal that makes this community valuable would depart if it was entirely filled with 10x as much noise.

Let people make their own communities with different standards if they don't like this one.

I have posted it in the same subreddit and it received few replies, one of the redditors said that he remembered my original comment. Nothing happened. I did not contact other people becouse I had no proof.

"It's not censorship if we can still whisper in the back alleys."

So if Facebook isn't ubiquitous and omnipotent they cannot be considered a censor? You're deliberately applying an impossible requirement that you made up. By this requirement there is nobody that can censor, "China doesn't censor because you can still talk about what you want in America." It's absurd.

FB censors private messages between two people on Facebook Messenger. That's the claim. I'd say it's pretty well backed up with proof and facts in this thread.

Pornhub seems to be fine today.