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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   35028 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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What's your definition of "shadow-ban"?

The second one you quoted is fine, with the caveat that it doesn't have to be undiscoverable to everyone.

As far as I can tell this new post-Twitter-Files definition of shadow banning as any kind of limit of an accounts reach is entirely invented for the purpose of claiming Twitter lied about not shadow banning people (in the same blog post where they are extremely clear about what they mean by shadow banning).

And as far as I can tell, insisting that to meet the definition of "shadow-banning" content has to be made 100% undiscoverable is entirely invented for the purpose of claiming twitter hasn't lied about shadow banning people.

I agree. Twitter does shadowban and has lied about it. They have multiple degrees of shadow banning, but it exists. They are not going to say they do, but it has the same outcome.

I think this is just a new halfway measure that didn't have a specific term. Would anyone be unhappy with calling this as "partial shadowban" or something like that?

...

Honestly I forgot how many times I got permabanned from somewhere. I mean, when you find out you can make dignified, reasonable Americans absolutely lose their temper and go ape by posting at them about 13/50, twin studies and race and IQ, it gets rather tempting to do so. (the psychological reasons why I did so are rather clear in hindsight)

Very easy to be banned on reddit subs. Not even race/HBD stuff. Just ideological disagreement.

...

See my post above, more subtle forms of shadowbanning like Twitter uses have been called "shadowbans" for many years. Including by the shadowban.eu site that everyone used to check.

It was also something most right wing accounts I followed were subject to. People like Nick Land, 0hp Lovecraft (still has a search suggestion ban), Steve Sailer etc.

I did a search and all 3 of those accounts used the term "shadowban" that way years ago:

https://twitter.com/Outsideness/status/934264497639899136

https://twitter.com/Outsideness/status/1184531291741577217

https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1588375202953854976

https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1192976470802460673

https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1311276706553094146

People on Twitter talking about shadowbanning were referring to the Twitter form of shadowbanning, not the too-obvious Reddit method.

Twitter has something like 5 levels of shadowbaning. The worst is being totally ghosted on the site. Or having all your comments be hidden in 'show more' , or search result ban. Most people who think they are shadowbanned are not , but rather think they are because their tweets seem to be getting less engagement. but this can be due to many reasons, such as posting links or hashtags or embedded tweets instead of text/pictures, which do the best. Tweets with links are throttled compared to plain text, video, or pictures.

...

I don't understand how the requirement to be undiscoverable to "everyone" is being invented. The word "everyone" is right there in the definition Twitter gave of what it considered shadow banning back in 2018. Now, maybe your own definition has never had "everyone" as a requirement, but Twitter seems to have clearly communicated that their definition included "everyone" and so, on their own understanding of the term "shadow-banning", did not "shadow-ban" anyone.

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