[Normille]

I can see the thinking behind it. Why let a spammer know no-one is seeing their junk? They'll just keep creating new accounts.

But having been on the end of it myself with other accounts here -just for disagreeing with people who were obviously more 'in with the in crowd' than me- and without even receiving any warning first, I think the way it is sometimes implemented is pretty childish.

[selfhoster11]

While shadow banning has some benefits, at its heart it is a form of gas-lighting (claiming that everyone can see your message, while it's actually just you), with good intentions in the case of HN.

I don't know that it shouldn't be used just because of philosophical objections, but it certainly messes with the idea that a system is meant to either obey or refuse the command given by the user, and do so honestly. Lying to the user that yes, the post is published, while it's intentionally hidden, breaks the assumption that a system will behave consistently.

[yetihehe]

> but it certainly messes with the idea that a system is meant to either obey or refuse the command given by the user, and do so honestly.

If some users don't want to act honestly, rest of society should not honour their malice. Honouring malice leads to dissolution of society.

[selfhoster11]

I don't mean to imply that shadow banning hurts abusive users' feelings, and even if it does, I couldn't care less because being malicious is a choice.

What I meant is that shadow banning is, by design, an invisible punishment - and therefore, you cannot see that you've been caught up into it as a false positive and punished. This doesn't happen on systems without shadow banning in place.

[yetihehe]

Yeah, we can argue all we want, but it is only implemented as a result of users able to use free resource to mess with others by creating new account when they know that they are banned. Possible solutions:

1. Don't ban users

2. Ban users and tell them

3. Ban users and don't tell them\

4. Don't allow free accounts

Unless you know a better solution, we have to accept shadow banning as a speed bump. And like speed bumps, they unfortunately sometimes catch good-willing users, but make life better for thousands of other users.

[Overtonwindow]

It’s like being blackballed. I often wonder if people knew they were blackballed in Hollywood during the red scare. They were Shadowband. A lot of people have been unfairly “shadow band” in real life. In my humble opinion it is most certainly unethical. If someone is to be ostracized, to be banned so to speak from whatever activity that is, they deserve to know why.

It’s better to correct one’s behavior if one knows what the hell they are correcting. Correction and rehabilitation can’t have progress if you just put them in their own echo chamber.

[yetihehe]

> If someone is to be ostracized, to be banned so to speak from whatever activity that is, they deserve to know why.

Shadowbanning could go away if people were actually ostracized, which means expelling from community. Currently if you ban someone, you only ban a single account and they can create another one. Some people are banned not because they don't know what they do, they are banned because they are intentional on destruction of society. They won't learn anything from banning them. That's where shadowbanning comes in, they can shitpost all they want, but rest of us doesn't have to listen to them.

[mcphage]

> It’s better to correct one’s behavior if one knows what the hell they are correcting. Correction and rehabilitation can’t have progress if you just put them in their own echo chamber.

This is still assuming good faith on the commenter's part—some people don't want to correct their behavior. Maybe they're doing it for money, or for attention, or maybe they just like annoying others.

And even if you are someone that might be willing to correct your behavior, it's not HN's responsibility to guide you to rehabilitation, when it comes at the cost of making the conversation worse for everyone else along the way.

[mah4k4l]

It's kind of trivial to check if you're ghostbanned though via wget script or something for example. I don't think ghostbanning slows down spamming enough to be ethically justified.

[codefreeordie]

The concept might have originated as an anti-spam tool, but now it's just part of narrative enforcement.