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EyesAlight  Formerly blendorgat  1yr ago (text post)   2230 thread views

Do we already have shadowbans?

I noticed that the comment counts don't seem to line up with the total comments on this post, and a couple others. Do we already have shadow bans in place here, or is this just some delay issue?

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We do, sort of, and also not sort of.

So, first, we have a similar comment filtering system that we had before. In theory we had it disabled but it turns out there's a hilarious bug where there's no "disable" option, and instead people with negative scores are getting filtered, which I think is hilarious and do not plan to change. (We'll be enabling it soon anyway.)

This means that top-level posts need to be approved by us before they go public, as do comments from new users. Turns out these still contribute to the reply count and so that's part of what you're seeing.

Second, if deletes their post, it doesn't decrement the post counter. We should probably fix that. I accidentally replied to someone with a test account and then deleted it and now that post eternally has an extra comment mark. Such is life.

Third, we do actually have shadowbans as well - it came with the site - but we haven't used any yet.

Do you solemnly swear to not use shadowbans?

In my opinion, shadowbans are an appropriate measure in only two circumstances:

  1. the target is a bot, not a real human

  2. the target is an alt who is attempting to evade regular public bans

Precisely because these are cases where a real ban is ineffective because the target will just try again with new accounts repeatedly, and the shadowness helps prevent them from knowing it's necessary. Shadowbanning a real human for regular rule breaking is sinister and evil, the only purpose it serves is to reduce transparency for mod decisions.

I'm willing to use it during periods of high new-troll activity; if there's a bunch of people making new accounts just to post bad stuff then I'll simply remove it. In a day or two we can turn the standard activity filters on, though, and that'll help things enormously.

actually maybe I should just turn those on now.

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