Should HN Be More Transparent About Shadow Bans?

Question

Disclaimer: I&rsquo;ve been shadow banned before (I believe twice) and the mods were very responsive and courteous in clarifying why and the terms to remove the ban.I&rsquo;m a big fan of this community, and its mods, as it&rsquo;s one of the last places where I find stimulating and mostly on-topic dialogue.My proposal is that Hackernews should improve transparency & control over shadow bans. Presently, shadow bans are only implicitly revealed to the user, e.g. by hitting a comment throttle.In case you aren&rsquo;t aware of shadow bans, they are applied by the mods to reduce your reach and throttle comments when you have violated HN TOS aka guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.htmlI&rsquo;ve run integrity services for social media and understand that transparency for ban violations does allow for gaming of the system. So I understand why a community would not inform the violator of their ban status.That said, I believe there is a happy medium that could be reached for good intentioned participants (like me) who may stumble with spicy / controversial comments from time to time.It&rsquo;s also timely, since AI content has been polluting HN, and we need to support real people (like me), especially controversial ones who care about the community (also me).I&rsquo;m a big fan of this community, and the mods, and hope that opening up conversation around shadow bans policy will help develop a good solution.What do you think? Should T&C be improved with Shadow Bans?

toomuchtodo · Accepted Answer

Also a big fan, it is my favorite and only third space. I believe they are fine as is, as some who has had comment throttling applied, and is not given vouch. Their sandbox, their rules. You can always email to appeal and plead your case. Otherwise, you're giving away trust and safety signal to potential threat actors and people acting in bad faith.You will either change your behavior improving collective discourse and have privileges restored, not, or learn to operate within the constraints applied without changing (throttled comment posting, etc).

chrisjj · Answer

> for good intentioned participants (like me) who may stumble with spicy / controversial comments from time to time.Have you been shadowbanned for comments merely controversial?

metadope · Answer

I am a noob. I remember, it was not too long ago, when I first read the guidelines, took a deep breath, and submitted my very first comment.

I was immediately downvoted.

Zero karma. Into the Darkness. It was 200 days before I tried again (I'm sensitive).

As helpful as the guidelines[0] are, they are just the beginning of a learning experience. I've decided that participating in the HN community is like playing Zork[1]. You have to step to the edges to discover the boundaries. You have to feel your way through; you need to absorb the feedback you receive and find your way, without falling into the pit.

Often moderation comes from the veterans here. Some of the moderation process does seem mysterious to me; I am still exploring; it takes time to understand and map out all these connected rooms.

There is sometimes an 'unfairness' but life is equally unfair to everybody.

I hope I am never shadowbanned.

Now, let me get back to my game.

  > Throw the sack at the troll

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork

fragmede · Answer

You're assuming good faith and while I am not questioning yours, the added friction for spammers who aren't engaging in good faith to have to email with a personal message serves as enough additional friction to disuade casual spammers. At a guess, anyway. I don't work here and aren't privy to any internal information. So, sorry to say, but no, I personally wouldn't support that.