I think you would be surprised at how effective shadow bans are. Most users just think their comments haven’t gotten any replies by chance and eventually lose interest in the site. Or in some cases keep making comments for months. The only way to tell is to look at your user page signed out. And even that wouldn’t work if they started to track cookies or ip instead of just the account you are signed in on.
But shadow bans are a pretty extreme example of silent moderation. My point was that removing individual comments almost always goes unnoticed. /r/Technology had a bot that automatically removed all posts about Tesla for over a year before anyone noticed. Moderators set up all kinds of crazy regexes on posts and comments that keep unwanted topics away. And users have no idea whatsoever.
I think you would be surprised at how effective shadow bans are. Most users just think their comments haven’t gotten any replies by chance and eventually lose interest in the site. Or in some cases keep making comments for months. The only way to tell is to look at your user page signed out. And even that wouldn’t work if they started to track cookies or ip instead of just the account you are signed in on.
But shadow bans are a pretty extreme example of silent moderation. My point was that removing individual comments almost always goes unnoticed. /r/Technology had a bot that automatically removed all posts about Tesla for over a year before anyone noticed. Moderators set up all kinds of crazy regexes on posts and comments that keep unwanted topics away. And users have no idea whatsoever.
The Streisand effect is false.
Is there a way to demonstrate that? :-)
There’s this reddit user who didn’t realize ve was shadowbanned for three years: https://www.reddit.com/comments/351buo/tifu_by_posting_for_three_years_and_just_now/
Yeah, and there are women who don’t realize they’re pregnant until they start giving birth.
The tails are long and they don’t tell you much about what’s happening in the middle.