Shadow ban and what it eats - part two
My previous article about “Shadow Ban” on reddit received about hundreds of comments on Habré and, since I posted it I learned a lot of new things on this topic, I decided to write a sequel.
In this article, I will reveal additional details on how an automated shadow ban on reddit works.
Five days after I sent a letter to the administration with an appeal about my status as a “shadow ban,” I received the following answer:
')
Literal translation:
" Thank you for contacting us. Your account was caught accidentally when [we] were aiming at [hunting for] some spam signals. You are no longer in a shadow bath. "
From the answer it becomes clear that I was banned not only by chance but also, at the same time, automatically. The version about automating shadow bans is confirmed by the story that the user of the Unity forum told , where I will also post my article:
Literal translation:
" I was also banned by the shadow ban several times, but I always received a notification in one form or another about the bath and a link to the subret for testing for staying in the shadow bath + other instructions. "
[Second Post]
" [Quote] Isn’t the whole point of a shadow ban not because you don’t know about it? And also: what do you need to do to get a ban there several times? I'm not familiar with reddit culture. [The quote is over]
Well, every time I received a shadow ban, I had to contact the reddit employee, since the subreddit moderators could not do anything. Every ban I received was false, because reddit algorithms are easy on hand and, I suspect, this is one of the reasons why, at least on some subdits, there are bots that scan and send notifications about it [scan participants for the presence of a shadow ban and send them messages with instructions if they notice a ban - auth.].
Never created a reddit, misbehaved or advertised anything. "
It is noteworthy that this user received a notification that he was in a shadow bath and I did not. I believe that the bot notifications that the user mentioned may have been present earlier on the reddit, while the shadow ban distribution algorithm was tested as soon as the system no longer needed the tests - the bots were removed. Another explanation may be the personal initiative of the moderators of credits on the introduction of these bot-notifiers, which was subsequently abolished by the administration of the reddit. Of course, we could simply go to different subreddits with just a comment author.
Another participant on the same forum posted a link to the “unofficial guide how not to get a shadow ban on the reddit”.
Here is the part of the publication, which describes how the shadow ban is applied:
Literal translation:
" [The site] reddit.com also has a small number of workers, called administrators. These people have the opportunity to see everything that happens on reddit, delete materials just like the moderators [subredits], perform the actions of the moderators in any of the subredits and, most importantly for this topic, to give users shadow bans or suspend their account.
Shadow Ban differs from Reddite Ban. The user who received the shadow ban can still write comments, but all these comments will be sent straight to the spam reddite queue, where they will not be visible to other users until they are confirmed by the moderator. Since spam comments are still visible to senders, the shadow ban is practically invisible to the connected user. "
Judging from this article, as well as from the repeated comments that I received on the network, you can make the following conclusion: the shadow ban is most likely issued only by reddit administrators, but they do this using a certain algorithm to search and collect the users who are best fit certain automated criteria.
On the other hand, my experience showed that the article does not accurately describe what happens to those who received a ban: the article claims that all comments from a banned user are reread by the moderators before being published while my experience has shown that this is not true since I wrote messages for about 4 days and not one of them saw the light.
Most likely, the administration of reddit uses the approach of “cutting wood - chips fly”, and the users of their social network need only be vigilant and independently monitor their hidden statuses.
Another interesting example of applying a shadow ban is YouTube. But this is a topic for another article.
Be carefull!
EDIT: I completely forgot to mention another important mechanic on reddit: the system simply dynamically “collapses” messages as soon as they gain enough negative reputation. As soon as you put enough cons on the post, it starts to look like this:
actually making your comments invisible. Yes, they can be “discovered”, but most likely, very few people will do it. The reputation threshold is easy enough to overcome - it is somewhere between -2 and -5 post reputation, when each post starts with +1 reputation. So keep in mind, this may be another reason why you do not respond!
In this article, I will reveal additional details on how an automated shadow ban on reddit works.
Five days after I sent a letter to the administration with an appeal about my status as a “shadow ban,” I received the following answer:
')
Literal translation:
" Thank you for contacting us. Your account was caught accidentally when [we] were aiming at [hunting for] some spam signals. You are no longer in a shadow bath. "
From the answer it becomes clear that I was banned not only by chance but also, at the same time, automatically. The version about automating shadow bans is confirmed by the story that the user of the Unity forum told , where I will also post my article:
Literal translation:
" I was also banned by the shadow ban several times, but I always received a notification in one form or another about the bath and a link to the subret for testing for staying in the shadow bath + other instructions. "
[Second Post]
" [Quote] Isn’t the whole point of a shadow ban not because you don’t know about it? And also: what do you need to do to get a ban there several times? I'm not familiar with reddit culture. [The quote is over]
Well, every time I received a shadow ban, I had to contact the reddit employee, since the subreddit moderators could not do anything. Every ban I received was false, because reddit algorithms are easy on hand and, I suspect, this is one of the reasons why, at least on some subdits, there are bots that scan and send notifications about it [scan participants for the presence of a shadow ban and send them messages with instructions if they notice a ban - auth.].
Never created a reddit, misbehaved or advertised anything. "
It is noteworthy that this user received a notification that he was in a shadow bath and I did not. I believe that the bot notifications that the user mentioned may have been present earlier on the reddit, while the shadow ban distribution algorithm was tested as soon as the system no longer needed the tests - the bots were removed. Another explanation may be the personal initiative of the moderators of credits on the introduction of these bot-notifiers, which was subsequently abolished by the administration of the reddit. Of course, we could simply go to different subreddits with just a comment author.
Another participant on the same forum posted a link to the “unofficial guide how not to get a shadow ban on the reddit”.
Here is the part of the publication, which describes how the shadow ban is applied:
Literal translation:
" [The site] reddit.com also has a small number of workers, called administrators. These people have the opportunity to see everything that happens on reddit, delete materials just like the moderators [subredits], perform the actions of the moderators in any of the subredits and, most importantly for this topic, to give users shadow bans or suspend their account.
Shadow Ban differs from Reddite Ban. The user who received the shadow ban can still write comments, but all these comments will be sent straight to the spam reddite queue, where they will not be visible to other users until they are confirmed by the moderator. Since spam comments are still visible to senders, the shadow ban is practically invisible to the connected user. "
Judging from this article, as well as from the repeated comments that I received on the network, you can make the following conclusion: the shadow ban is most likely issued only by reddit administrators, but they do this using a certain algorithm to search and collect the users who are best fit certain automated criteria.
On the other hand, my experience showed that the article does not accurately describe what happens to those who received a ban: the article claims that all comments from a banned user are reread by the moderators before being published while my experience has shown that this is not true since I wrote messages for about 4 days and not one of them saw the light.
Most likely, the administration of reddit uses the approach of “cutting wood - chips fly”, and the users of their social network need only be vigilant and independently monitor their hidden statuses.
Another interesting example of applying a shadow ban is YouTube. But this is a topic for another article.
Be carefull!
EDIT: I completely forgot to mention another important mechanic on reddit: the system simply dynamically “collapses” messages as soon as they gain enough negative reputation. As soon as you put enough cons on the post, it starts to look like this:
actually making your comments invisible. Yes, they can be “discovered”, but most likely, very few people will do it. The reputation threshold is easy enough to overcome - it is somewhere between -2 and -5 post reputation, when each post starts with +1 reputation. So keep in mind, this may be another reason why you do not respond!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/349124/
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