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Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

Would most people consider an account shadow banned when it can post as normal, yet its post are secretly set to have near zero visibility? The answer is self evident. Twitter tried to redefine shadowbanning to something they do not do, and then put out a post saying they don't shadowban. That is engaging in extremely bad faith. Using the definition as normally understood, is not.

There was a post on Hacker News when this blog was released: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17623306

One post there sums it up pretty well: Is it just me? Did I just read a blog post that said “We don’t do this thing I’m going to explain how we do the thing we don’t do.”

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It doesn't matter what "most people" would consider, because Twitter provided their definition of the term at the time. People disagree about all sorts of terms, and that's totally fair, but what Weiss is doing is retconning her own personal definition of the term on Twitter's policy statements, which were unambiguous. She is, in turn, being unambiguously dishonest.

It's interesting how selective people are about the supposed Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.

Right, Twitter provided their own definition which delicately tiptoes around the unsavory issue and Weiss expanded the definition to suit her own self-interests.

How does that make what "most people" would consider not matter? Seems like a non-sequitur to me but maybe I'm not understanding your point.

Agreed, it's rare for any service to outright say "we shadow ban" as done here [1] for example.

And, most services still use a form of shadow moderation [2]. So it's perfectly fine to discuss here. Attempts to shut down conversation are just that.

[1] https://getstream.io/blog/feature-announcement-shadow-ban/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33916414

Because the thread is about Weiss's claims. If you want to talk about how Twitter's definition of shadow-banning is problematic, or their moderation practices in general, start another top-level thread.

> yet its post are secretly set to have near zero visibility

Whoever is following you and using the chronological timeline will see your tweets just fine as they happen.

Twitter deciding not to promote your tweet in the trending-ish/follows timeline doesn't seem close to shadowbanning to me.

Isn't near zero visibility the norm for most users?

I have been shadowbanned on Twitter and it is very different, even with no followers. I don't even know what caused it but it might have been reporting a person who was inciting violence (who subsequently committed said violence). Ever since then Twitter has been blocked on my network.

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