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I apparently got shadow banned almost a year ago from blahaj, for a comment I made on lemmy.world
(lemmy.sdf.org)
For the record I was posting in support of inclusive language, but pointing out that context and convention matter.
They seem to have even scrubbed my comment from their instance, lol.
I don't think there is anything like a shadow ban on Lemmy?
It seems to be an unintentional side effect, that ends up being similar to a shadow ban.
What I mean to say is that I can still make comments on blahaj posts, but they will never show up to users of their instance. So, to me, it seems like everything is okay, when in reality, I've probably been commenting into the ether for 10 mo.
Example:
https://lemmy.sdf.org/comment/16663205
It's not like a shadow ban. It's just a normally instance ban. A shadowban is by definition invisible to to the affected party. This is very much immediately visible through the modlog.
My greater point is that it's dishonest to liken this to a shadow ban due to the secretive connotations of the latter and the way this paints the admins who gave it out
Most users don't habitually check the modlog, let alone of every individual instance they engage with. It has pretty much been invisible to me for the last 10 mo, and I've commented here and there multiple times on blahaj posts in that timeframe, with no immediate indication I had been banned.
Seems to fit the definition to me.
I noticed that you were banned from there a couple of months ago.
How?
I noticed a conspicuous absense of wesker posts, and then reviewed the wesker profile with my computer.
And you check that habitually every day? For every user?
Cmon dude it's not hard to say you were wrong XD
Only for paying subscribers.
you're not going to win this fight.
So your argument is that because a modlog entry exists for the ban, nothing else about how it is applied matters? That's a little obtuse imo. I have seen several users claiming not to even know the modlog exists and being thrilled to learn about it. For many users, it's a small link in the footer they never noticed. Users don't get a notification about bans and if the end result is your comments appear to show up for you but not others, that definitely meets the normal definition of a shadowban. Lemmy could introduce some new features(s) to help with that but in the meantime it's absolutely reasonable to see how a user would interpret things this way. I've been on Lemmy over a year and I'm just now finding out this is possible so I wouldn't say it's the fault of the user for not understanding how it works.
Lemmy lacking moderation notifications in the UI or email notification backend doesn't make it a shadowban, if they were absent from the modlog and didn't put the banned flag on your profile then that would be a shadowban. They didn't make an attempt to hide it from you, the communication methods are just very poor right now, there is a reason why Lemmy is on version 0.19.3 or 0.19.8 for the later instances, this is still considered alpha software, it's not finished. The jank is to be expected for a software in its infancy.
CC: @[email protected]
I mean, I was saying what it seems like, not what it is. The user unfriendliness leads to confusion. And yes I understand software takes time, development is what I do for a living. I was just saying it's reasonable to feel like you have been shadowbanned given the circumstances
My point is that that instance admins didn't intend it as a "shadow ban", but as a normal lemmy ban for someone they don't believe deserves a platform towards their instance membership. Therefore insisting on calling it "a shadow ban" when most people understand that term to be something else than an instance ban, is egregious and misleading with the aim of revenge.
Sure, lemmy could introduce notifications, In fact, since the modlogs are public, this could be done by any frontend. But it's still doesn't mean that the admins tried to shadow ban someone.
Well my comment made clear that it wasn't about intent but rather a reasonable interpretation.
Lemmy has 50k AMU and it is severely over modded
Too Many chiefs, not enough Indians
In response to your edit, I don't particularly care about how this post paints an admin that would call me a transphobe and instance ban me, over the singular given comment and the context in which it was made.
Any instance admin can ban users who are toxic to their instance member. Calling all these completely normal bans "shadow bans" is disingenuous.
It doesn't matter if this is Lemmy's default behavior. Allowing users to post comments that cannot be viewed by anyone in the receiving community is shadowbanning, regardless of whether Lemmy puts that label on it.
I would argue that's the fault of the frontend not informing the user that they're banned, and not a shadow banning.
The notion that his comment was "toxic" is objectively ludicrous.
Sorry, but they didn't call that comment toxic. Just that if an admin finds someone to be toxic, which is of course subjective, they can ban them.
In that case the word "toxic" should not have been used, especially in the way it was used "ban users who are toxic to their instance members" (emphasys mine) rather than "ban users who they think are toxic to their instance members", as the former implies that the OP is "toxic" rather than that specific Admin conclude (possibly all by themselves) the OP was toxic.
Even if "toxic" had been used in a way that conveyed the message that in this case a person's "toxicity" was the determination of an Admin (human opinion, rather than some kind of neutral process), I think one of the points that is being made is that for certain Admins, the barrier to ban is a lot lower than "toxic".
this kind of "Toxicity" is obviously subjective. Just because you don't agree, doesn't mean that their members don't and they don't in fact expect it of them.
Two points:
One Admin making such a determination is hardly a strict process like a Judicial one (is supposed to be) with a beyond reasonable doubt determination.
That the Op was banned for what he or she wrote elsewhere than in forums of that instance also, at least for me, given extra weight to the idea that the decision to ban was an arbitrary by a single person who has a very specific power rather based on very concrete criteria and validated by other people.
Absolutely that Admin is Technically Entitled to do what they did (it's their instance so they have that power), but that's a whole different thing from the action having been Ethically or Morally Correct. Mind you, I'm not even saying it wasn't, it might have been by chance, but the process that seems to have been followed - merely the opinion of a single human being who for technical reasons happens to have a certain power - is hardly something designed to maximize that chances of an Ethically and Morally correct result.
(Curiously, I would have found a vote by the members of the instance to be a perfectly acceptable and morally correct way of determining that they didn't want that person's presence in their instance, and in that case would have agreed with this last post of yours - though I still disagree that such process yield a beyond reasonable doubt assertion of the toxicity of the OP - but that doesn't seem to have been what happened here)
That's about the least egregious part of it all, but noted. I'm still going to refer to it as shadow banning, because it makes no difference to me that it's technically a misgiving of the Lemmy platform.
Sure but your argument loses credence and is also confusing since most people have something more egregious and underhanded when talking about shadow bans. You're being deliberately misleading in order to hurt the reputation of said admins more.
Shadow. Banning.
I am daddy, I am make the rules in this house vibes spotted.
Sure then just fucking say so in the mod log then instead of making up bullshit like rule 1, trolling or racism etc
How do you know they don't see your comments?
Compare with the thread as it appears on their instance.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/20091173