User:Endercase/draft

"From: Stealth banning and it is intended to return there. NOTE: sorry about the mess (citation needed tags), this is nowhere near deployment. -- Endercase"Stealth banning (also called shadow banning, hell banning, ghost banning, or User Discouragement ) is the act of blocking a user or their content from an online community such that the user does not realize that they have been banned.

By making a problem user's contributions invisible or less prominent to other members of the service, the hope is that in the absence of reactions to their comments, the problematic user will become bored or frustrated and leave the site. If the user never becomes aware that they were banned, it is less likely to occur to them to attempt to circumvent that ban.

The system is a more complex example of the "don't feed the troll" approach to community management.

Notable Examples
A 2012 update to Hacker News introduced a system of "hellbanning".

WeChatwas found in 2016 to ban posts and messages from China-based accounts that contain certain keywords without notice.

In a study that looked at tweets from 2014 to early 2015, over a quarter million tweets were found during the one year period in Turkey to have been censored via shadowbanning.

Twitter was also found, in 2015, to shadowban tweets containing leaked documents in the US, though Twitter claims this is a bug. In 2017 Twitter implemented a "timeout" feature where accounts could be temporarily restricted such that only their followers could read their message. This is similar to error banning but because it has notification it is not stealth banning.

Craigslist has also been documented "ghosting " a user's individual ads; and reportedly entire accounts in 2017. Reportedly, an ad is placed and confirmation is sent that it has been posted; the ad may be viewed in the user's account, but, if ghosted, will fail to show up in the live listings.

Early on, Reddit implemented a similar feature, initially designed to address spam accounts, though it is also used for general users. In 2015, Reddit added an account suspension feature, though still makes extensive use of shadowbanning.

Also, In 2017 the phenomenon was noticed on Instagram, there certain posts have been seen to be unavailable to people who do not follow you in hashtag searches. There has even been a website launched to check to see if an account has be affected.

Variations

 * Hellbanning:
 * Where the targeted users are introduced to a variety of "errors" or "bot control" measures without notification.


 * Slowbanning:
 * Where problem users have loading delays or other slowing measures introduced into pages they visit on the site, in the hope that their participation will be reduced.


 * Errorbanning:
 * When the problem user is served error messages, usually fake, as they browse the site.


 * Coventry:
 * The practice of allowing specific groups of users to see each others' posts but post are not visible to other users.


 * Comment ghosting (also known as "selective invisibility") :
 * The practice of rendering an individual post invisible to a portion of viewers, usually all viewers except the poster without notification.

Further reading and external links.

 * A Drupal module
 * Ask Slashdot: Using a Sandbox To Deal With Spambots?
 * Twitter discussion on #shadowbanned