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In a move that isn't particularly surprising given their lack of support for intellectual diversity to date, Reddit has introduced outright bans to replace its shadow banning policy.
Reddit has introduced an "Account Suspension" feature that will replace Shadowbanning for non-spammers, though previously shadowbanned accounts are not going to be automatically unbanned.
A post on July 28, 2015 by Reddit admin /u/krispykrackers explains the basics of Shadowbanning, a tool initially created to counteract spammers by hiding their content without letting them know their account had been shadowbanned. However, this was Reddit's only tool for an account-wide ban, and it has since been used on people other than spammers as well.
Account Suspension will be more straightforward and transparent than a Shadowban. An F.A.Q. page (sic) linked in the announcement post states that only Reddit administrators will be able to apply suspensions, which can be temporary or permanent. Permanent suspensions will result in a message about the account's status being added to that account's userpage.
See, I'm a veteran. This means I was willing to take a bullet for the right of my countrymen to speak their minds. On this at least I have not mellowed as I've aged. My personal line in the sand is that we will never site ban for anything but over-the-top spamming or gross/repeated illegal activity while I am on staff. See my journal if you feel the need for that last statement to be expounded upon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @07:06PM
I totally agree with what you said. The mods on SW don't take shadowbanning nor banning lightly. They do automodding as well, but the parameters are very tight, so as to not impede with legitimate posters.
I think the behavior you're describing is quite prevalent everywhere in human life. There are always (I hesitate to use the word "people" because that would imply that they have compassion and empathy) people, that will always try to game the system, or just create chaos in everything they touch. So, there are tools to help the moderators and admins, and they're being abused by others, and of course that just makes it hard for people that are legitimately following the rules and being good community citizens...it's nothing new, and they really are hurting others, and it needs to be stopped somehow. I'm at a loss as to how.
Due to the sheer volume of posters to that site you posted at, it could have been a mistake or deliberate, but I would have tried to ascertain what was going on. If you got nowhere with it, then I would have just abandoned the site as you have done.
I had the same thing happen with me on Digg. I guess LOL Cats are much more interesting than what I was posting, so I just left them to it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @07:14PM
> Due to the sheer volume of posters to that site you posted at, it could have been a mistake or deliberate, but I would have tried to ascertain what was going on. If you got nowhere with it, then I would have just abandoned the site as you have done.
The thing that made me give up was that they had no clearly delineated process for even figuring out what was going on. No trouble-ticket system, you had to figure out who to contact and then figure out how to contact them. Every single thing to correct the problem is the burden of the punished. There was not even an acknowledgment anywhere on the site that there could be problems (not just shadowbans) much less where to go and what to do. That might be ok on a low volume small community site where everybody knows everybody. But not something like that place. It is a sign of not giving a shit about their own fuckups.