Shadow Banned Meaning: Shadow banning is the process of demoting or hiding a user’s content within a specific group, site or social networking site without the user’s consent. The person is removed from the community’s site without their knowledge because instead of blocking or banning their posts, comments, or any other content that they post, they simply become invisible to everyone.
How Does Shadow Banning Work?
Online platforms employ shadow banning or stealth banning or ghost banning as a moderation technique to curb those whose actions violate standards or who engage in bothersome or hurtful behaviour. This approach is wider than the one banning and forbidding the user because the platform only limits the exposure of the content the user posts.
Here’s How ShadowBan Works
When users return to the site after being shadow-banned they can post and comment with their posts and comments displaying as normal. These contributions, however, are hidden from other users and a shadowbanned user feels that his or her activity is not noticed by other citizens.
When a person is shadowbanned, their content is often demoted in several ways; its discoverability in the platform is reduced. This could be done by either lowering the ability of others to post about it in news feeds or seeking results as well as recommendations. This is a much smaller audience than they normally receive and thus their content’s effectiveness is greatly reduced and people cannot see it.
Another thing with shadow banning is that the targeted user does not know it has been done. The shadow banning differs from regular bans or suspensions which always involve sending a notification or warning to the user.
Rather than blocking a user account, shadow banning is aimed at limiting that user’s content by using algorithms to decide what needs to be concealed. There are many ways in which platforms try to find out that some users or content pieces may pose a risk.
What Is The Purpose Of Shadow Banning?
The essence of shadowbanning is to control destructive behaviour or explicit content on the Internet while avoiding appellative actions such as banishment and suspension. This approach aims at avoiding uncomfortable behaviour, reducing the spread of negative content, maintaining a positive and good environment on the Internet as well as secretly hiding the appearance of a user’s content.
Key Objectives Of Shadow Banning
Moderation
Even though shadow banning has not received significant research attention, it should be clear by now that it allows platforms to manage user behaviour and content without necessarily bringing attention to specific users or escalating grievances.
User Experience
This practice is an attempt to improve the quality of content the audience interacts with and prevents them from coming across dangerous content.
Community Health
By decreasing the impact of negative or toxic personalities, shadow banning brings out the overall health of any online community. It is possible to note that platforms possess the opportunity to bring the community culture to a more encouraging level as it concerns restricting the freedom of the users and their ability to operate and publish fake information, harass other users or participate in other negative functions and actions.
Content Quality
The particular action eliminates various spam coming to the platform, thus maintaining the high quality and relevance of the information posted. This has the potential of uplifting image and reliance on the platform as a source of engagement and information.
Balancing Free Speech And Safety
It is often assumed that shadow banning is a way to deal with the conflict of interest between users’ need for protection and their right to free speech.
How To Know If The Content Is Shadow Banned Or Not?
Since the majority of the platforms make it difficult to get any sign or clue that the particular user’s content is being blocked or restricted, it may be difficult to tell whether the content is shadowbanned. But there are a few indications that might be indicative of shadow banning.
Let’s assume you realize that the level of engagement such as the number of likes, comments, or shares reduces at some posts compared to previous activity. It may indicate that fewer people are interested in what you’re posting, so this is a good indication that you will not have such tremendous numbers on the page.
Determine whether those people, who you follow or are connected with, have viewed your latest postings in the timelines or news feed. If they haven’t, it can signify people can’t locate your content very easily or that your content isn’t much of a discovery.
If you do not have a different account, create one or ask someone to come and try to see if he/she can view it. You can use this to see if your primary account is indeed shadowbanned.
Check how often your target audience comes across these posts and interact with them to check whether there is some spike in engagement compared to the usual posts.
As a result of moderation activities, if you consider that your content is against the rules of the community standards or the terms of service of the platform your content might be hidden.
What Can You Do When Your Account Gets Shadow Banned?
Often shadow banning is employed by the platforms to regulate the users’ activity without the user’s consent, so bypassing it is quite challenging. To possibly lessen its effects, you could try the following techniques:
- When entering the social network, a user should read the terms of service and available community standards. If your content does not meet the following guidelines, it is at a high risk of being shadowbanned.
- Do not include keywords and discuss topics which are often linked to spam, harassment or other sorts of misconduct, prohibited by the rules.
- Increase the awareness of your articles and do not stick to one particular type of article or one specific topic.
- Start trying to respond to your fans and followers in a way that will let you develop unique and deep relationships with them.
- Organize the data of your engagement level and observe the indexing progress of your content over time. If you see a dramatic decrease in the number of people responding, liking, or sharing your content, it might just be that Facebook is suppressing your content.
- If you think that you’ve been shadowbanned without a proper reason, it is time to contact the platform’s support service.
- If you still have problems with shadowbanning in a given platform you should perhaps consider using a different platform where you are not restricted once you want to share the content.
What Are The Other Sites That Employ Shadow Banning?
Even though most of the platforms do not claim to use shadowbanning, some social media sites and online communities have been accused of using this method. Following are a few platforms where shadowbanning has been reported:
Because of reports that the platform is privately limiting tweet exposure, Twitter has been declared as a shadowban culprit. This has created controversy, with some of the users complaining that their post was deleted due to political opinions or other reasons.
As with Twitter, Instagram has been accused of practising shadowbanning for user content, particularly where the material in question is sensitive or conveys strong emotions resorting to certain hashtags. Concerns have been raised over the enablement of material on a platform that is attempting to moderate hashtags and control the algorithmic feed of a million images.
Reddit employs numerous measures whenever it comes to problematic users, and while it does not talk about shadow banning, it employs the tactic. The posts of the users that violate the norms of the community may be removed or set to private without any action from the administration side.
YouTube
There are complaints that the most censorship approach has been used as the Youtube platform has been said to have presumably banned particular channels or topics. As for the changes in the demonetization policies and algorithms, questions about the site’s transparency and unbiased content management appear.
Final Say
The goal of shadow banning is to indirectly substantially deal with negative conduct and material for the benefit of a satisfactory and constructive digital culture. However, due to the ethical concerns concerning shadow-banned meaning, there has been discussion on its relevance in the moderation of the platforms.
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