Nicely said. I don't even understand the purpose of a shadow ban, really.

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... unless the bot uses two accounts, each watching the other.

Seems legit...

Happens in forum a lot. But with Tor and tunneling and an endless supply of gmail accounts. and lets face it trolls dont give a fuck about anything but spreading their message and that message gets out.

Censorship. Because Reddit is full of idiot employees and of course falsly advertise this website as open.

shadow ban= no one commented on my post :((((((((((

you are defo shadow banned

no ur shoadowbanned

:-( really?

Excellent.

all of the submissions and comments of a shadowbanned account are immediately filtered and placed into the modqueue for adjudication. And, even if approved, they're not visible to the general viewing public unless a direct link to the comment is provided.

As a user who was previously shadow-banned and discovered this while asking a mod in another subreddit to approve a post I had thought was spam-filtered, I can tell you that if a subreddit approves a shadow-banned user's comments or submissions, they will show up in that subreddit.

I'll stand corrected on this particular matter, but it doesn't change the relevant portions:

• their stuff still comes through the filter thereafter (you can't train the filter to stop filtering shadowbanned users).

• they need to be notified that the mods don't like dealing with it every time they post or comment, and that the mods can't undo the shadowban.

tl;dr: the mods can only compensate for it (and we'd have to do that compensation for every post/comment), we can't fix it ... except this method of notification.

I think if you approve a user, then their posts will appear...so another option might be to approve them and notify them that they are shadow-banned.

Potentially counter-intuitive if the person actually did something to earn the shadowban in the first place (e.g., if they're blog spamming from time to time, we don't want to make them an approved submitter - we want to give them a "wake up call").

Formalizing the ban in our subreddit may not be ideal for every situation. But it is equal, fair, and places the responsibility where it needs to be: on the user (we can't undo the shadowban - the admins don't even respond to our PMs if we request assistance ... we're no more powerful or important than the average user).

Right now this subreddit only has a handful of approved submitters and, as near as I can tell from glancing, they're all long-term members of this community in good standing. Adding random shadowbanned people to this list probably isn't the best approach.

EDIT: Thank you for raising these points. This latter point was discussed, by the way, but we didn't think it was wise. I've made some edits to the post above to reference these matters. Again, thanks for bringing them up.

It's up to you how you moderate and I understand you wish to moderate clearly but it was up to me I would tackle this problem with discretion. If a frequent r/conspiracy user was shadow-banned, I would approve them. Likewise if they had something important to say and they hadn't posted much here before.

I waited until well after this post had drifted off the front page of this subreddit before responding, because I didn't want to be seen as an instigator of controversy. But, I do have a few serious questions for you about this.

First, I have no idea if you are an alt of qghy2, the moderator account present in many (half or more?) of the default subreddits (the "biggies", so to speak - million plus users). But, let's pretend, just for the sake of discussion that you are that person.

Is this really how you would deal with shadowbans in such highly trafficked subreddits? Individually evaluate every shadowban to see if you "want that person" in your subreddit and make them an approved submitter, and then leave them shadowbanned throughout the rest of reddit without informing them of the shadowban?

Also, would you make that evaluation every time a shadowbanned submission/comment comes through your modqueue? Or only if you thought the comment was particularly clever or insightful (thus increasing the popularity of the subreddit)?

The reason I ask is that I know enough about the frequency of shadowbans to know that it would be a tremendous amount of work to do what you suggest in a larger subreddit. It also seems a little callous to only do it for people you think "deserve it" based on one or two comments. I saw a shadowban just recently that had 1 link karma, 0 comment karma, and was a user for 1400+ days (meaning they'd been shadowbanned for 4 years without anyone telling them). Don't you think everyone who's been shadowbanned deserves the opportunity to know that and to try to adjust their behavior to avoid it in the future?

Just trying to figure out the rationale you have for justifying selectively approving shadowbanned users in a subreddit, but not informing them of their ban. That seems almost as creepy as the shadowban itself, in my opinion.

Simplicity before understanding is simplistic; simplicity after understanding is simple.

I had a shadow ban done to my previous account, new account now.

60 and counting..

Does anyone else find this practice profoundly creepy?

Which practice? The admins' use of shadowban? Or, r/conspiracy's solution to it?

Shadowbanning. I didn't even realize it was a thing until I read this post.

This sounds like a good idea. The practice of shadow banning is something I've never agreed with, because it is so sneaky. By outrightly banning the person, you remove the sneakiness of it.

It is highly effective for fighting bots and a great many of the amateur clone spammers (who are just clueless idiots).

But, it's kind of a slap in the face for an actual user who thinks they're participating (I saw a post many months ago from a guy who discovered - on his own - that he'd been ninja banned for an entire year without realizing it. <-- this just seems cruel.)

So, yeah. We agree. This removes the "sneakiness" part and washes our hands of it (in two senses: we're not being sneaky, and it never was our problem anyway).

Ok, so I've got a couple of questions about this after seeing this pop up in a thread.

First, I get the concept. I am totally on-board with letting users know they've been banned, rather than relying on shadowbanning. It makes perfect sense, and sounds like a good system.

What I don't understand is:

(1) How is this not disciplinary? Isn't the point of a ban (any ban) to discipline the user? Is there something I'm missing?

(2) I saw a user get banned in this thread, and found a ban to be a bit much for the comment. (just my opinion). Personally I think bans should be reserved for spam, threats, and other more egregious violations. I guess it's good that we now know that the user was banned, instead of them just disappearing, but do we really want to let people never post again for comments that are typically found in a conspiracy forum? Just asking for some feedback.

Thanks for being open about the process though, it is definitely a step forward.

I saw a user get banned in this thread, and found a ban to be a bit much for the comment.

You are making a connection that doesn't exist. The ban was not for the content of the comment. I explained this to you in that thread.

Personally I think bans should be reserved for [...]

The moderators agreed to this by a substantial majority. (Three abstained, all others agreed [and, at the time, we had an additional mod who also agreed]. So, it was like 7 in favor, 0 objection, 3 abstained [two of whom have interjected when they feel it is necessary, and one that is in an extended state of inactivity]). So, I guess we think that the tools that are available to us are ours to use as we see appropriate and productively useful. As a result of our more liberal philosophy, many shadowbanned users are now being granted a second chance at life throughout reddit, not just r/conspiracy.

The problem with approving the individual comments is that it doesn't motivate the individual to correct the situation (which is outside of our control). Making a new username isn't that difficult. Avoiding having it shadowbanned, well... that all depends on the individual, but it's still not our problem.

Sorry, I was so confused.

I didn't understand that the admins were doing the banning.

I realize it says that in the post (which I read several times), but when you read it, and then the end result is that you (the moderators) are the ones doing the banning, the first part got lost in translation for me, and somehow I assumed that all of the actions were the result of the moderators of the subreddit.

Thanks for clearing that up, I think I won't be the last person to be confused, but it's a sticky problem to deal with, and I'm glad to see something being actively done about this.

Thanks for your time.

Thanks for helping us add more clarity to this post. It may be helpful to those future confused people.

"(1) How is this not disciplinary? Isn't the point of a ban (any ban) to discipline the user? Is there something I'm missing?" I agree. This seems to suggest that its a personal grudge. Or a set of rules that are not given to the general public.

Either way its a land mine, and the path is open to corruption of it.

I think you might mis-understand (like I did originally)

The ban is done by the admins (or their spam-filtering system).

The users don't know that no-one can see their post, so the moderators here are informing these users that they've been banned so they can at least try and figure out why, or create a new account or something.

Otherwise they'd just keep posting forever, but their posts would be invisible to everyone else.

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Don't worry, it's not. Or is it? :O

lol..i was wondering the same thing! or could this just be mods responding..

Maybe I'm a mod and just haven't discovered how to use my powers.

How are the people that get banned from this subreddit supposed to be able to see this message that you're linking them to?

Banning them only prevents them from posting or commenting. It doesn't prevent them from viewing/reading.

It's up to you how you moderate and I understand you wish to moderate clearly but it was up to me I would tackle this problem with discretion. If a frequent r/conspiracy user was shadow-banned, I would approve them. Likewise if they had something important to say and they hadn't posted much here before.