On shadowbans.
Hello. I wanted to talk about shadowbanning, and try to answer a bunch of questions about it at once in light of recent circumstances on reddit about the topic, and try to clear up some FUD.
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What is a shadowban?
A shadowban is the tool we currently use to ban people when they are caught breaking a rule. It causes their submitted content and user profile page to be visible only to themselves while logged in. Moderators can see their comments within their subreddit (since they can see "removed" comments in the subreddit they moderate), but no other users can see their content, and nobody else can see their userpage.
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Why does shadowbanning even exist?
Shadowbans were the first type of ban created by reddit. It was used to ban spammers who were clogging up reddit with junk and making the user experience less enjoyable for everyone. The reason it a.) doesn't notify the user, b.) lets them continue to submit, and c.) makes it look like they're submitting normally when they're logged in and viewing their content, is because that way the spammer didn't realize he or she was banned and would simply continue to use the methods they were currently using to spam, and not try anything sneakier and therefore harder for us to detect and do anything about.
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So why are regular users being shadowbanned?
Because it's still the only tool we have to punish people who break the rules. I can't say for sure because I wasn't here, but at some point very early on it was decided decided that we needed a code of conduct to follow to keep the reddit experience enjoyable for everyone, and the rules were born. However, no new tool to punish rule breakers separately from spammers was developed at the same time, so we had to continue to use the shadowban tool.
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Why do you bother shadowbanning mods?
Because we treat moderators who break the rules the same as any other user. Being a moderator doesn't exempt you from reddit rules, nor does buying gold or being an advertiser.
We know that it's easy to tell when a moderator is banned because their modmail makes it quite obvious. In some ways that's actually a good thing, since their team can let them know and they can come to us to start the conversation about what they did to get banned and the process for getting unbanned (normally acknowledge that what you did was against the rules and agree to abide by them moving forward).
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Why don't you tell people when you shadowban them?
Mostly because we never used to. If we were to begin to today, since it's not automated, it would require us to issue the ban, then individually send them a message. That means that the admin that sent the message would be required to respond to every single person who replied back via their user inbox. It's not really sustainable or scalable as it would exist now.
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How does someone get un-shadowbanned?
They need to contact the admins and ask why they were banned. Currently they can either message the mods of /r/reddit.com or use contact@reddit.com. We have a conversation with them and once the situation is addressed and resolved, we lift the ban. Or we don't, depending on the severity and/or repetitiveness of the infringement(s).
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That sucks. What are you going to do about it?
We know it sucks. It sucks hard. It is awful and sneaky and completely our fault that it is still being used to punish normal users.
Right now, the current situation is that we still have to use this shadowban tool that we're stuck with to punish all rule breakers the same, be them bot or be them human, spammer or active user, anything.
However, like u/spez has mentioned during his AMA, "Real users should never be shadowbanned. Ever." And he means that. Because of decisions he's made in the past couple weeks, we're developing tools right now, for the first time in nearly a decade, for admins to better be able to punish rule breakers differently than spammers, and educate them at the same time, rather than just quietly removing their ability to visibly participate. I won't go into specifics or give any sort of timeframe other than "absolutely as fast as we can", but it's happening.
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Edit: Delivered
Is voting from a linked thread forbidden?
Is voting on np.reddit.com forbidden?
If so, why do you not use those two checks to simply disable voting and commenting functionality?
Even if only implemented in the UI it'd make an inconvenience barrier that would block 90% of the shit, and pretty much all the inadvertent rule-breaking. Actually not accepting the vote/comment backend would be even better (like you do with downvoting from user pages)
If those things aren't against the rules, can you stop punishing people for doing it?
Can you develop a clear and unambiguous policy on this, and advise the users of it?
Please?
No, but voting because a thread was linked is forbidden. Of course, there's no way to prove intent.
I put it to you that it's an inherently stupid rule, then.
So they assume it for the users they want to ban.
In a similar vein, I've seen mod-bots delete posts because they linked reddit without using np. If that's against the rules, why not just convert all reddit links to the np equivalent automatically?
It's not against the site rules, but it's against many sub's own rules.
We all understand what a shadowban is. We all understand that we're supposed to send you an email that won't get read in order to resolve it.
But seriously, why not for the time being, just tell us "We're going to tell our staff to stop shadowbanning non-spammers. If a staff member wants to shadowban a user, they have to notify the person they ban via PM with their account."
Would that really be a big deal? Just copy-paste a short PM whenever you shadowban somebody that isn't a spammer. You're acting like you need a research team and 20 years to develop a program to automate something that takes 2 seconds to do manually. How do you have time to manually shadowban non spammers, but don't have the time to literally send a copy-pasted PM?
Apparently they ban that many people that it is unsustainable
We have bots that send automated message. Coded by Redditors in their spare time. Why the fuck can't the actual Reddit team, who're PAID, do half as good a job?
Really though, he's talking as if it's impossible to send an automated message. I mean come on, that should take all of ten minutes for someone who knows the system. Hell just copy the code they use to send 'someone gave you gold' messages and change the text.
As someone who knows the system, ten minutes is an unrealistic expectation.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
The point is, the automated message would go to regular users as well as spammers and bots. They don't want the latter to be informed when they're banned. The real issue here is the idea that an admin can take the time to manually shadowban a user but not take a moment to inform them manually.
You can manually send an automated message.
theres a good chance they dont give a shit about automated bots
"Shadowbanning is terrible, sneaky, and underhanded and we should never do it, ever."
"Well, why don't you just tell people when you do it?"
"Oh, we do it way, way too much for that to be possible."
That's likely correct, though. reddit has millions of active users, it's not only likely, it's very probable there are hundreds of rule breakers every day. Plus, it only takes three seconds to make a new account after being banned, so it's not like the workload could ever get lighter.
You may dislike it, but if they only have one tool, that's that they have.
Not just millions, but hundreds of millions.
/r/spez, new CEO of reddit, a few weeks ago:
r/krispycrackers, today:
Except it was said that by the CEO of reddit that it was a tool designed to be used against spammers and bots, and would never be used to ban actual users, and that they would be informed if it happened.
At least send a message informing people that they've been banned. Just how many regular users are shadowbanned every day I wonder, since its impossible to inform them of the ban.
How in the heck are users supposed to get a shadowban lifted, when the point of the shadowban is to prevent them from realizing they've been banned?
What, you want consistency? That would take some effort and a bit of communication, nope can't have that.
It seems like they're acknowledging that shadowbanning sucks and is not being used properly.
That's what the NEW TOOL STILL BEING DEVd is for. Did none of you read the end FFS?
Yes.
One of the tools that the admins promised a deadline for. Then Bethanye Blount resigned as chief engineer from reddit, because because the timelines and promises admins had made were completely unrealistic.
Three senior female reddit employers have left since then. And the turnover rate for reddit employers in the last year has been insane. Reddit is struggling, internally, with their employers and how to manage them and the site.
So I'm a tad bit skeptical just as to what will be done and when it will be done when it comes from the admins.
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It takes far more than 20 minutes. Part of that is due to software development always taking longer than you think it should; part of it is due to reddit the software being a ten-year-old codebase.
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What I'm gathering here is that each time an admin sb's a user they'd have to message them personally, from their own account. This is a problem for a number of reasons. OP said scalability, but I'd throw in there's also concerns about only one person reading your replies, leading to a lack of accountability or lacking the perspective of other admins chipping in their two cents. There's also the fact if that admin ever leaves reddit it'd be a pain in the ass to go through their messages, etc.
Right now, as I understand it, admins can't actually send mail as u/reddit and have the replies go into some admin ticketing system queue. It seems like they use r/reddit.com's modmail for the task, which requires the user to send the first message. They're saying that's the state of things at the moment, and I can believe it'd be a significant amount of work to develop a solution.
"Please direct all appeals to r/reddit.com, replies to this message will not be read"
Solved.
Or, better yet, have automoderator do the messaging.
this is important. the scale here. admin can't do what's suggested itt. but it can build itself new tools. reddit must get smart, and i'm sure it shall. we've time.
They address this a bit, but that would mean anyone who would issue the ban would automatically be the person in charge of dealing with the blowback, since it's tied directly to their user account, and that's where all the mail is going to go. You don't want the admins to not want to issue a ban because they'll be in charge of it, especially if they're banning a long list of people...but there's also a simple solution. Just turn a random account 'u/BannerBot2000' or whatever into an admin account, and issue all bans from there. Either have rotating shifts or require everyone to check in a couple of times a day.
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Good fix: send it as the r/reddit.com subreddit. Mail from subreddits show up as
subreddit message via /r/subredditon the initial message.Yeah well, they are the person who banned the user - who else would you go to have it reversed?
There's a lot of people doing a lot of things, running a lot of diagnostics and capturing a lot of data. The person who swings the hammer is just the last person on that list.
But the one most proximate to the ban, and hopefully the one with the most knowledge of WHY the user was banned.
Unless you're saying admins are just banning people on the say so of others without knowing the reason?
This. If regular-ass moderators can program auto moderator to message users, surely it can't take that long for the admins to do it. The tool had better be sucking some dicks over there for it not to be done already.
Is there any nicer way to tell u/krispykrackers to go fuck themself? Because I think you just did it.
I think they have bots which do shadowbanning, not staff.
I didn't get the impression that it was the notifications as much as the inevitable follow-up conversation.
"You have an opinion that could potentially threaten our safe space? SHADOW BAN!"
I believe this to be more or less completely false. I know of several people who have sent messages to r/reddit.com regarding shadowbans and all got responses and most got unbanned.
Of course, in Australian time, the busyness of the inbox is probably way down because Americans are asleep, but it nevertheless goes to show they get read and dealt with.
Unbanned users can talk about it much more easily.
Everybody I've talked to who attempted suicide was unsuccessful. I guess it must be really rare for someone to be successful.
Practically every other website on the planet has gotten their shit together in terms of telling the user what rule they broke and them banning them, but here at reddit you act as though shadowbanning is the only way? Uhh...no. It creates a culture of mistrust just by its existence.
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Yeah I honestly have no idea why this is in r/self. They have a subreddit specifically for this stuff. >.>
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Individual subreddits even HAVE an explicit ban message that goes to the banned user... Why can't they just adapt that to the site itself? Am I hearing correctly that the mods literally have better ban tools than the admins?
reddit will never change.
Next up some admin will claim they never said that. /s
Could they not be using the same chain as thought as I think it was some at valve once said. something along the lines of "We will not tell you what you got banned for because there's a chance you're breaking multiple rules. If we tell you, then you have an idea of what we can detect and not detect."
That's fine if you're botting. If you're just a dick, then I mean, they should tell you that you're banned for being a dick.
Moreover, how many stories have you heard of Valve banning random normal people for accidental reasons? I can't say I've heard a single one (not to say that it hasn't happened, as I'm sure it has, but Valve certainly doesn't have the culture of mistrust as reddit does).
First off I want to say that I was recently mistakenly shadowbanned and unbanned fairly promptly after messaging the admins. They were very quick about replying to my inquiry. Thank you for that. But it does raise a couple concerns:
1. The admin that replied to me said I was part of a brigade fromanother sitein to a subreddit. This raises a few questions such as how was I identified as someone coming in and brigading from another site? One subreddit linking to another.. I can see that being traceable. Not from another site, however.2. What exactly constitutes a shadowban? As a community I believe that we need a clear and conscience list of rules and their consequences. Right now we have a small list of rules (which surprsingly when I went through them and the FAQ mentioned nothing about "brigading", a term I believe needs to be clearly defined) but nothing about possible punishments.
Thank you for addressing this so quickly after the video in r/videos popped up. It raised a lot of questions that I think redditors deserve answers to.
Edit: Thank you for those who pointed me to HTTP Refers. Question one is scratched.
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is the important part here. The admins seem to differentiate between "bad" and "good" brigades. Which is why people being linked by somebody doing an AMA on their twitter won't get people banned but sending a mass of people to do ill in a comment section will. There's a difference but the lines between a bad and good brigade are blurred.
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one's gold is another's garbage
The biggest problem is that reddit hasn't even defined what a brigade consists of on their own FAQ. I was just having this discussion earlier on another sub. I assumed a brigade was a conscious effort to effect a subreddit or post. That meant for you to be part of a brigade you'd have to knowingly participating in a brigade. Another user came out and said that you can be part of a brigade without realizing it if you simply follow a link and participate at the link's destination and that most brigadiers are unknowing participants.
You phrased it better than I could. That's exactly what I thought a brigade was until I was told I started a brigade one day. I believe the mod's words were something like, 'you didn't know you were doing it at the time, but you actually started a brigade.'
That is exactly how i got shadowbanned, i didn't even notice for almost a month, i voted on something that i couldn't even remember what it was. New users are supposed to know the "don't vote on things in these circumstances, but its ok sometimes" code that reddit has? How many users are shadowbanned and not know about it? Like that one guy that was banned for 3 years.
By the same token though, they also seem not only care about certain "bad" brigades. Just in the past couple days, users have used SRD to brigade posts and downvote people into the hundreds, yet there was no action taken by the admins.
The shitty part is it sets a presidence that voting and commenting in threads like that is okay, and then if the admins do take action people get upset for not knowing they could have been banned.
Commenting in threads has never explicitly been against the rules, that was always a subredditdrama rule, not a site-wide rule.
However, it was once said to me by an admin that if people are always following linked threads to yell at people abusively, yeah that might be a different story. So... bit of a grey area there, I suppose. But commenting in a linked thread is not against the rules, unless something has changed very recently and no one was told.
SRD bans brigaders. If you have proof of a user brigading message the mods.
One time I was banned and unknowingly started a brigade. That is not why I was banned, but if people were banned for brigading and the brigade is a naturally occurring thing how is it fair to ban people who just happened to post first, what they thought was an original thought? Even still where do you draw the line between that and actual brigading? Is 3 people a brigade? 5, 10, 20? The whole idea seems ripe for loose interpretation thus abuse.
Yeah that's what I'm thinking. A celebrity links an AMA of theirs on twitter, followers have accounts or make new ones. They do the AMA really badly for example and people downvote the shit out of it because they either
don't like it (Already registered users like us downvoting)
OR
2. are brand new users wishing to express their dislike of content (extremely innocent voting, even though downvoting)
They, in the same situation as u/thenovamaster are now susceptible to a shadowban for 'brigading'
Like
What the fuck level of clarity does that create.
And you're right in saying that this type of ban will literally prevent the site from growing. Because from their point of view, anyone coming from twitter and voting at all is a brigader (although brigades seem to flow more to the downvoting of something more than the up) Because you're literally killing off site traffic that comes from.. another site
And with internal cross voting such as SRD and SRS. I know it's controversial, preventing cross-subreddit voting itself is still damaging the system.
One subreddit shouldn't be banned from voting on another subreddit. Think of the subreddit's as honeycomb cells and the users as the ones that fill it with honey. You can't just tell bees which cells they can access so why do that to your own community.
It's a thing. Brigading. Its a thing that can get mixed up with normal votes on legitimate user+content situations. Reddit, being on the World Wide Web is going to get visitors from other social platforms. It's going to happen. And users from some subreddits, already here. Might go visit other subreddits. And yeah, one user might link to another subreddit and people might view it in bulks and upvote/downvote certain comments. That last one is seen as a problem by administrators but if you can see both sides to this protecting reddit vs this literally preventing reddit from working the way it's designed to, then it makes sense.
Granted. There are no actual tools on the np. links that prevent_fucking_anything np links for example can still be voted on like normal. The only thing that changes is that maybe the target subreddit has a theme/CSS-Style in place to warn users "Hey, you're here by a link that has .np in it, please don't vote" but people do anyway and we see that all the time on this site. People do it anyway.
Admins could mark threads and make it a site rule the mark cross-post threads like the ones in SRD with a special mark that "if a user comes from this link in their HTTP Referal link, then block them from voting on this subreddit or thread for 24h"
It's just a suggestion and I don't know how well it would work in real life. But just taking usage of .np links or link visiting based on last_page_visited seriously you could easily fix the problem the Admins think exist.
If you're in SRD, and click a link? reddit puts you in read-only mode on the target page for like 30 minutes or some shit.
But that's just my suggestion.
I understand if a subreddit doesn't want to come under scrutiny and face downvotes for their views. That can be a perfectly legitimate concern. Subreddits are able to be set to private for that very reason. That being said, anything that's set out in public view on a public forum should be, and ought to be, open to criticism. Then again I'm a huge proponent of open and free discussion. If someone disagrees with me I welcome the chance to discuss it.
I couldn't agree with you more. But personally even the idea of a subreddit breaking the system by 'putting up a shield' still just feels wrong.
Discussions that are so close minded the sub could become poisonous for normal people would arise in those conditions
It kind of is. I can see how it would be a problem if someone goes on twitter and tells their followers, "Everyone go harass this post/subreddit/etc." But to come across a subreddit or post organically (either on or off site) and then be banned for participating.. that's a little weird.
Right now, the rule everyone on reddit is supposed to be following is that you should never vote or comment in a thread if you were linked there from another source.
It's extremely understandable that reddit doesn't want larger subs (or hate subs) to "invade" smaller ones and be assholes. That's basically what the rules are for. Otherwise, people might not ever talk about fringe topics, which are a big reason for reddit's popularity.
Unfortunately, people are simply not mature enough to go "Hey, maybe going to a sub I don't like and telling everyone why they suck is not the best thing I could be doing with my time right now," so they have to create rules to keep people from doing that so that discussion can be encouraged on a variety of topics.
The problem is that the rule is just too all-encompassing. Sometimes it makes sense for a user to vote or comment in a thread that was linked from another thread. Sometimes it's also a community they are a part of, but they hadn't run across the post in their front page yet. Sometimes it may be a topic they really want to add to.
Let me give you an example. I am subscribed to at least half a dozen separate subs for the A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones series (yes, I know I'm a dork, hush, I have a point to make!). Each sub is a little different, but there are loads and loads of people who frequent several of them. I'm only using this as an example. This is not a criticism of any of the mods of any of the subs in question.
Now, suppose users on one of the subs are having a lengthy and heated discussion about how much hype you should get for Cleganebowl. User Bob just read something really awesome on this topic yesterday, it had a whole bunch of links and sources and stuff (u/BryndenBFish probably wrote it), and he thinks it would be a great addition to this discussion.
User Bob posted a link to the comment from yesterday. A bunch of people click on it. Probably 3/4 of them are already subbed to this sub as well. Most of them likely forgot that they clicked on a link to get here. It's stuff they read about all the time.
Now, I don't think the admins are really aggressively pursuing someone who posted relevant comments within a community. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot. But the point is, everyone who clicked Bob's link and subsequently commented in u/BryndenBFish's thread is technically breaking the rule as it stands now.
tl;dr Brigading definitely needs to be defined more clearly, as right now it tends to discourage participation in multiple similar communities.
I totally understand the rule, I just believe it's poorly written and poorly handled.
My issue with that is that it makes it seem like reddit's official stance on their userbase is that they're all children that need constant supervision. I think the amount of people who actually engage in this type of behavior is pretty on par with the general population that "just wants to see the world burn" as it may. For example during the whole FPH removal drama the evidence of brigading (as far as downvotes go) showed maybe 1k-3k downvotes per post. I can't remember how many people were subbed to FPH but I know it was over 200k. Somwhere in the range of 1-2% of the userbase participated in that and to me that seems about right. I'm not condoning actions of these people who purposely targeted people for harassment purposes only but the numbers mimic what you'd expect to find anywhere else.
I guess my stance is that I don't really believe the rule serves it's proposed purpose of curbing harassment and instead harms the majority that would use sharing for legitimate discourse.
HTTP referer?
You're right. For some reason that didn't come to mind.
The HTTP referrer tells reddit which site you came from when you click on a link on another site.
Edited my post, thank you.
"For the Reddits was a great bastion of the interwebs and many did flock to be in communion with it. Yea even though the Reddits stopped not for sea nor sky it was limited for there was much that was not that it should be.
For those who were in communion with the Reddits none drew as much ire as that of the Shadowbans, for when wielded these could bring one into the other world where they were of the Reddits and yet unbeknownst to them not of the Reddits
And there was great fear of the Shadowban for it was a great power with much responsibility. For it was created to destroy the spammers, that it was to bring balance to the Reddits not leave it in darkness.
And so it was that all was as it is usually and the Reddits continued on its course to its destiny uninterrupted”
--The Book of Reddit Chp 512 pg 4589 “The shadow of the other world"
Damn, I haven't seen this account in a long time.
Every single time the admins use our subreddit, they never stop to say "Hey, using your subreddit to make a little post that might get a lot of attention"
Ellen, Victoria, and now you ;_;
better shadowban him
Seems like there is a massive disconnect between moderators and the admins with a multitude of examples in the last month or so.
oh mate dont take me that seriously, lol
I checked the sidebar to make sure it didn't break any rules =/
You have my explicit permission to use r/circlejerk in the future.
The comments will be far better, I promise.
I need more alt accounts to upvote this comment
You are now a mod at r/shawdowbanned
Speaking of that, u/GodOfAtheism should really ban the "upvote if" posts that get submitted to r/circlejerk, since we're told that even ironically, it's not okay. I don't have the modmail now (I stepped down on that subreddit), but it's apparently not allowed.
Permission to post on r/Kreiswichs is also granted. Though the whole post will have to be in German.
ಠ_ಠ
r/announcements? r/blog?
Those are defaults. They probably don't want THAT much attention.
I am going to Egypt
r/reddit.com if the admins had a work ethic
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Get out of here with that crazytalking nonsense
Hey u/krispykrackers be careful, because even if you didn't break any rules there is a good chance you'll get removed from the subreddit just because u/allthefoxes doesn't like the content of your post.
Just wanted to give you a heads up
There is a good chance this will get removed and I'll also get banned from this subreddit like I was from r/pics for no good reason.
I think they just want warning because of the higher volume of needed mod actions.
mmmm~
Well, its there for the future!
wait, so did you change the rules?
How about r/modsupport? Nice communication.
Presumably, mods are far more aware of how shadowbans work compared to the general reddit population. There isn't really any reason for this post to go there, it wasn't mod specific.
This wouldn't be the first time you've come across as a giant tool, u/allthefoxes
Each time you are here, sad, in the comments. I feel you, little sub not long ago, taking lots of attentions with waves like this one, they said they'd communicate more last time x) You should add it in the rules !
Edit : I see you did add it :)
This seemed worthy of a public callout rather than a friendly PM though dude? I don't think it occurs to the admins to message the mods first. It wouldn't for me.
quickedit: you... added a sidebar rule about it? O.o
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So why are you guys making this announcement now? Did something happen on this sub?
This post in /r/videos was probably the reason. Linked admin comment calling OP out on bullshit because I love it.
Wow, what's up with that? You'd think people would have better things to do with their time than make multiple accounts on Reddit to troll and spam. Thanks for the link.
Evidently YouTube AdSense spam can be very profitable and difficult to catch
This ring is being very blatant about it with several identifiable patterns, but there's also the occasional post from "generic" YouTube accounts that have very few videos but millions of views on them, all viral in nature. I have to say that this alone is probably the biggest and stealthiest problem this site has since it requires upstream scrapes / api calls to fully investigate. The problem is also compounded by people selling their videos rights to "viral video services" as well as buying viral videos.
deleted 0.3580 What is ^^^this?
I was banned, not shadowbanned, from Askreddit and the mod told me it would be a month ban. Fair enough. After a month he told me I needed to submit to him an original content drawing of a flamingo gambling in a casino.
Is this normal? Should I be shadowbanned for circumventing that restriction?
I generally ask for 500 word essays from people who get banned from r/circlejerk
Yes, evading that ban can still get you punished
I think the navy seals copypasta clocks in over 500 words.
lol. I was banned from askreddit and I had to draw a picture of a cucumber fighting (or trying to fight) a chili bean to get unbanned.
That drawing was freaking hilarious because I am definitely NOT an artist by any means..
I'll see if I can find it in my message history :D
FOUND IT! hahahahaha
https://i.imgur.com/gWiFBaA.jpg
Beautiful. Mount it on your fridge!
awww shucks :)
What the fuck, Reddit isn't elementary school and you're not a teacher. Apologies if I missed the (implied) /s somewhere.
Silly question, is there a reason for requiring a silly drawing other than it being funny?
But, it depends on the subreddit and the moderators.
What people need to understand is that every moderator is different, and we work independently of the admins or other subreddit moderators... and that the pay is not good.
As for this question:
I think the answer is no, until one of the reddit rules is broken, right? You cannot be shadow-banned for only breaking a subreddit specific rule.
You don't think that ban was ridiculous at all?
You won't question the ban when a moderator starts swinging powertrip-bat warnings like that?
really no need for concern in that field when a fellow moderator of like, one of your subreddits did a ban like that?
Edit: You aren't an admin but the question doesn't matter
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someone needs to create an app or extension that you can set to regularly check if you are shadowbanned. Set it for once a day. And then it alerts you if you were banned.
it already exists. it's called "right click username -> open in incognito/private window"
if your profile still shows up, you're not shadowbanned.
if it doesn't, you're shadowbanned.
I want it automated! have it do it by itself!
http://nullprogram.com/am-i-shadowbanned
I'm so fucking tired of people parroting this stupid rhetoric.
You know what u/spez also didn't say? "We are going to immediately stop shadowbanning real users without any alternative to address perpetually toxic people".
Most adults understand that the word "should" means "ideally" and not "absolutely positively right now immediately". Come off it, already. Pretend for maybe more than 5 minutes that you're an adult and exhibit a basic amount of patience.
Comment deleted by user
That's actually what
means, except it ALSO means retrospectively.
I really don't get why this was posted on r/self. There is no better subreddit for admin posts such as this one?
Am I shadowbanned?
Maybe.
Who said that?
r/shadowban. Useful to find out if you are or not.
Yes!
Everyone on reddit is a bot except you
No.
Are you shadowbanned?
Yes.
A very simple change in programming can fix that.
Comment deleted by user
Well, they'd have to hire a programmer...
FUD = Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt
Term commonly used in business, sales, etc.
I always thought it meant "Fucked-Up Data" but I suppose yours makes more sense in this context.
Comment deleted by user
You have to understand, Reddit admins are not professionals, and the company has no standards of service or even a complaint mechanism.
Numerous posts by their corporate hierarchy has shown this.
Opens Popcorn
why wasn't this a blog post or an announcement? so many people will never see this.
Thanks for starting to think about fixing shadowbanning. I'm a victim of it.
Related topic - one reason for a shadowban is "self-promotion." That's how I got hit. But if I went thu reddit and reported every user whose posted more than 10% of their posts to their own content that would include a lot of the heroes of reddit - the people who make reddit great with their content. I want to share my content - in a subreddit where people want to see my content - where they can upvote or downvote as they please - and where mods moderate. Isn't that enough? I'm now shadowbanned for posting to my stuff (which I make no money on, or gain in any way) at a ratio higher than 1:10. Does reddit want content creators - or are we outlaws?
Does reddit want me to go find 9 links to post every time I want to post 1 link to my stuff? What's the point? I can post 9 shitty links that no one likes, how does that help things?
I'd like to see some depth added to the rules on self-promotion to make this a place where I can share my content with people who want it. I shouldn't be in the same bucket with the guy selling viagra.
If anyone reads this, Thanks
A month later, they're still shadowbanning people.
Do you guys and gals plan on updating the rules to make them more clear?
They said they did, a few times (once in the AMA and once before), but I'm not sure how long it'll take.
Thank god you all fired cupcake. When I asked why I was shadow banned, she just replied "you know what you did. Bye."
hm.. i may be remembering things wrong, but i actually think cupcake was the one who reversed mine.
Cupcake had a very mixed reputation. Some people hated her, others (like myself) found her amongst the most plugged-in admins.
Are you going to be hiring more community managers? It seems like there's a lot of work for the existing staff and naturally things get lost in the queue. I think the ability to quickly ban and more importantly unban people would really help at least until the new tools go live.
So send a message as u/reddit or r/reddit.com
It's not hard.
u/krispykrackers
Why do you admins do nothing when ShitRedditSays breaks rules such as brigading and taking over an entire subreddit such as r/PunchableFaces?
As a previously shadowbanned user (for something that I completely admit doing and have not done since) I just have one question:
Why is SRS allowed to break every single rule there is on this website, yet they are never reprimanded at all?
I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
[r/whataboutsrs] Why is SRS allowed to break every single rule there is on this website, yet they are never reprimanded at all? WHAT ABOUT SRS?!??
If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / ^Contact)
lmfao of course. surprised it took this long.
Not trying to sound kinky, but... How would reddit punish me?
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
http://i.imgur.com/P0FPSTk.gif
No one would be able to see your comments.
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This seems like an obvious and overdue step. Thanks for letting us know that it's finally happening.
What's frustrating is that so often we're told changes in policy aren't possible because it would be impossible for the admin team to manage the workload. For example, I suggested a system of reporting to admins that was accessable to mods in their own subreddits that worked like the mod report function. Whether it's true or not, every single response I got from mods (and an ex admin) was that it was a fantastic idea but you would never do it because it would be unfeasible to actually deal with all the rule breaking that goes on.
It's frustrating, given that mods are held to account if we don't keep our subreddits to a certain standard, that the admins are incapable of doing certain things because of a lack of staff. If you were angry at a sub for not clearing out spam quickly enough and they responded by saying it wasn't feasible to manage the spam with the size of their team, would you really be okay with that as an answer?
I know in this case you're planning to change the tools but "it's not feasible" isn't really a satisfying answer.
God forbid you build some moderation architecture to make modding Reddit a little easier
Either A) message one person directly involved with the process, or B) message everyone on the admin team... because that would be more sustainable.
Wouldn't it make some amount of sense to have probationary shadow bans? Like, a normal user can be shadowbanned for a week or two as punishment for breaking the rules? That seems like a decent way to use the tools you already have to effectively administer the site without forcing people to throw away their account and start a new one. You would have to decide which rule infractions should result in what durations, but that's not exactly an impossible task.
Yeah so I didn't know being shadow banned for bullshit reasons was very severe enough that my ban doesn't even get looked at or replied to.
This should not need repeating, but it does.
For shame reddit, the shadowban bullshit has been going on for so long now, it's just as bad as the infringements people get banned for. It's great that you acknowledge this and I really hope you can implement something better, but I hope you get constantly reminded of this fact until it's just a bad memory.
This whole practice is fucking stupid, especially with all the drama and constant spewing of ideological beliefs.
I fear that I am going to get caught in the crossfire and be banned for not doing anything other occasionally making a comment. I don't even care about that stuff. I'll read the drama threads and whatever, but that's about it. It's ridiculous that I have to keep watch over myself in fear of the "thought police" and just not post anything of substance.
Lol @ "Its not automated"
Its so hard to include a PM saying you have been banned with the shadowban function. What a cop out.
Am I the only one who thinks the only real problem with reddit is not having a smooth channel of communication between admins and mods? 90% of the issues I have seen "tools being developed for" could be just as easily addressed if contacting (and getting a response from) the admins wasn't tantamount to begging an audience with the Pope.
I find it hilarious that there are so many bans that letting people know is "unsustainable" like are you fucking kidding. Get over yourselves. Your time is not so valuable that an integral part of moderating is "unsustainable". These neckbeards are on Reddit all the time anyway I'm sure the "extra" workload is bearable...
Maybe I'm coming in late in this discussion, but here are my two cents:
Maybe reddit has too much users because it's too damn easy to make an account. It takes literally seconds or less to open a new account. And you can post everything.
I'm throwing away numbers, but I'm sure the number of new accounts would drop 10% or even 20% if they introduced email verification.
What about regular bans from a subreddit? How are they typically lifted and how long do they last?
Any updates on this? This post is two and a half months old now; I just had a frequent user in one of the subreddits I moderate shadowbanned. It's frustrating to lose a contributor without having any information on why they're now gone, and not to be able to answer any questions about why the shadowban was enacted.
I advised the user in question to message you, but the problem still seems to be around months after you said that you realized it was a problem, which I find frustrating.
What is the meaning of life?
My problem with shadowbanning is when it is used on someone who didnt know they technically broke the rules. Like brigading. SOmeone posts a link from one subreddit to another and people naturally follow it and act as they would anywhere on reddit and upvote and downvote comments and then BAM! SHADOWBANNED!!!1 Lumped in with everyone else as a brigader! Not knowing what the fuck happened or why it happened.
THANKS!
And then when you finally talk to admins they accuse you of being a brigader and act like a prick about it like you did something intentionally malicious . Like they are god and are going to graciously unban you if you beg and promise to never do it again.
You understand the frustration this can cause to a person who didnt think they did anythign wrong?
Because of THIS bullshit I am never going to directly follow a link (to another subreddit post again) for fear of being acused of brigading. I am going to look up the post via the subreddit's submission list and access it THAT way.
Thanks for making reddit THAT much more of a pain in the ass! (yes, I am pissed!)
http://i.imgur.com/BCN9vSb.png
I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
[r/bestof] Admin /u/krispykrackers discusses the shadowbanning system
[r/bestof] Admin /u/krispykrackers makes a post in /r/self giving insight into the shadowban situation on reddit.
[r/blackout2015] Admin Krispy Krackers hosting a Q&A on Shadowbans
[r/circlebroke] Admins posted a thread about shadowbans. This should be fun.
[r/drama] Admins submitted something about shadowbans. Everyone uses this opportunity to not read the post and stir stuff up.
[r/shadowban] On shadowbans. : /u/krispykrackers
[r/shittheadminssay] Shadow ban 101
If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / ^Contact)
Don't misunderstand me, I am not in favor of shadowbans, but I think that part of the problem is that there is no real cost to the punishment of a ban without them. Because accounts are essentially free to create and they can be created in unlimited ammounts, if you inform someone that you have banned them then they can just create another account and continue. However, if you don't tell them then they have to spend their time and effort figuring that out and that expended time and effort is the punishment.
I'm interested to see what the technical solution is because you can either introduce cost into account creation, or you design a progression system on accounts to give them tangible value. Another fun idea would be replacing Karma with digital cryptograpic tokens that can redeemed for advertising and are trade-able on an open market like what the guys at Letstalkbitcoin are doing with Tokenly.
The mods could just ban accounts based on IP/browser ID, instead of shadowbanning them?
With a message to the account being banned saying that "you've been banned, send a message to X for information".
Post this on the blog. r/self just doesn't have the subscribers to dessiminate this info everywhere effectively.
Solution...
Shadow ban spammers for life.
Shadow ban/ban users from 7 days to life depending on the severity and frequency of their offences and inform them.
It's how every other forum on the internet has worked for decades.
So.... Admins are a bunch of fucking liars?
No surprise.
A small forum I go on has a "time out" section. I think that's better because it is transparent to the user about what is happening and why.
Take the part of the code that bans users from subreddits. When user is (non-shadow) banned, apply it to all subreddits. Voila, regular bans.
Is there a way to tell if you're shadow banned? Are shadow bans specific per subreddit or site-wide?
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"Move slow and leave things broken."
Speaking for myself, I think shadowbanning makes perfect sense in the context of keeping spammers and other undesirables at bay. A real user will notice after commenting for just a little while that something's up and will search out the reason for the strange lack of upvotes or response. Ultimately they've found that they're shadow banned.
This is mostly annoying at this point. However, the worst part is that the process to get unshadowbanned is wrapped in mystery. If you message enough, the admins may get back to you in a day or two, a week, a month, or never. That's the worst part. I understand that admins are busy with many things. And the confronting users about inappropriate behavior is probably difficult sometimes. However, I believe a little empathy for the user would be appropriate, especially for a user in good standing who doesn't know what the hell they've done!
Solution? Maybe add 'moderators', or whatever you'd like to call them, who sift through the shadowban messages. Possibly make a subreddit for it where people can appeal their ban via Mod Mail and have a large number of moderators who have teh powah to undo it if they feel that it's warranted. Maybe work a system where warnings/penalties can be introduced for paroled Redditors.
To recap, shadowban sucks, but I see the point in it. However, the process behind resolving a shadowban needs to be more transparent and dehumanizing.
I can at least attest that this isn't a one every ten thousand messages thing. I got shadowbanned once and contacted the admins, took them less than a week and an additional message to respond and unban me. Would I've liked to get a response to the first message? Probably. Am I happy I got a response? Yeah. So, food for thought I guess.