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Shadowbanning practice on MMO forums.
CalmOceans
Member UncommonPosts: 2,437
Have you seen this happen on official forums of your MMO yet. I have seen it on one forums, but it is becoming widespread so I will explain what it is for people not familiar yet.
Basically, you used to know when you got banned, you couldn't post anymore.
With shadowbanning you don't realise you are banned.
Shadowbanning is an insidious way to ban people without they knowing it.
Basically the person is completely unaware he or she is banned, and the posts only show up for themselves and not for others.
But out of this have sprung new types of shadowbans. Many are no longer based on being logged in, many are now IP or IP range based. Meaning you can log out, log on your cellphone, log on your other PC, you will no longer have any idea if your post is gone or not. To you it will always appear there, but to everyone else you will not even exist.
More recent shadowban systems not just remove the user, but they selectively shadowban, meaning only certain posts, chosen by the mod, are removed, but you have 0 idea your post is gone, even if you manage to change your IP address, the shadowbans use temporary IP range bans.
I think it's important to know this, not just regarding MMO, but in general, this type of way to censor is becoming increasingly popular, regular built in comment systems like Livefyre already have build in shadowban.
Comments
That sounds kind of pointless, what's the goal besides being stupid?
I did hear about this just today apparently a Global Agenda 2 dev got shadowbanned from Reddit. But I didn't know what it was lol.
Basically it allows you to censor a topic, without the community or users knowing posts are selectively being filtered out. It allows you to get away wtih large scale censorship without it being noticed by anyone.
The more insidious IP range shadowban, allows moderators to selectively remove posts, and unless you have a large dynamic IP range, which 99% of internet connections have not, you can not tell posts are gone, nor can you even prove it, because each time your IP address is seen by the site, it shows the post, even though in reality, everyone with a different IP range can not see it at all.
It's not just on Reddit this is going on, livefyre, which is used by thousands of sites, has built in shadowban capability, it's getting more and more widespread and few people understand what is going on, it proves how undetectable the system is for most people, because it's been going on for a while.
It is a VERY tricky road at the moment filled with tons of landmines.
Most Private sites with any intelligence at all are making the choice to honor free speech and a free exchange of ideas.
However your right to free speech is not assured on a private site.
That being said there are a large number of court cases under review that challenge what is a public and what is a private internet entity.
Reddit currently is facing 5 lawsuits that claim reddit has surrendered its private status and is now a public forum.
Censorship on a public forum for reasons other than criminal, obscene, or violent postings is a violation of the law.
I personally would argue that the entire internet is a public forum and that any censorship other than stated above should be considered a violation of personal and civil liberties and should carry substantial fines and even jail time.
We are in a brave new world, a world of technology so beyond what the average person understands.
We face a nightmarish challenge of freedom and privacy, where many governments, corporations, and private individuals blatantly choose to violate existing laws both civil and criminal with a willful determination to seize our freedom and exert power over the masses.
Most people are so blind to just how close they are to a mass world slave state, be it established through debt, law, or force of arms.
If we the people of the world make the choice to be passive to walk quietly and not with word or action defend our freedom we will within our own lifetime lose the little freedom we possess.
We must be forever engaged, forever diligent in our defense of ourselves as well our fellow man. For the freedom we so readily surrender for another is soon the freedom we have surrendered for ourselves.
You argue that it should be illegal to censor spambots. Without any way to combat spam advertisers, forums like this one can't be meaningfully useful. But of course, spambots don't care if they are shadowbanned or normally banned, so that's getting off topic.
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For the original poster, is this happening on MMO forums, or just on reddit? Sites that get carried away with censorship will tend to find that fewer people try to post there, and can end up effectively killing off the site entirely. But some people like forums that are more aggressively censored to chase away trolls and such.
It happens on many sites, but it seems to have gained a lot of momentum lately ever since Livefyre implemented shadowbanning right in their comment system. Some MMO use Livefyre so all those sites have the ability to shadowban. Shadowbanning used to be only built into custom comment systems.
This person claims Youtube has shadowbanning ability, and can detect him just by his PC. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkNITdIAtvI
It used to only be account based, then it got more advanced and it became IP based, now shadowban systems seem able to detect specific PC.
Some ppl showed shadowban systems can also change what you're writing, so you write "bla bla bla", but someone else thinks you're writing something entirely different.
I don't think shadowbanning stops spammers, I don't see how it does that, it's being used as a censor tool.
When I ran a forum many moons ago, I would use a vbulletin feature (Tachy Goes To Coventry) that instead of banning the person in the traditional sense, everything they posted would be invisible to anyone other than themselves (or the admin team).
I preferred this method as we wouldn't have to deal with so many people creating fake accounts just to carry on their bitching in public. The offending poster soon got bored with being ignored, and stopped posting anyway.
****EDIT****
Just checked - I used this in 2003 and it was known as 'invisibanning' back then.
Just saying....
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
My comment about spammers wasn't aimed at you. It was aimed at psiic's arguing that it should be broadly illegal to censor things on online forums.
shadowbanning is the perfect tool for trolls, but can be used against any1.
No more post regarding how bad X game,how OP X thing is on the official forums? im sure Riot or Blizzard would love it.
Hey at least I know my post wasn't shadowbanned.
There was a time when, before 2000, that's about 'everyone else' found the internet, it was the last bastion of complete free speech. You used be able to post and read ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. From illegal porn to how to build a nuclear bomb. At some point, after 9/11 we lost our free speech. Is what we have now better?
I am one of those that began to use the internet in the late 70's. So sad to see what's happening.
This technology is good on people who spam adds on forum, like the moron who did shoe commercials on this site a while back.
It is not good an regular people including trolls though because they do need to know that they are banned and why, more than a few actually learns from their mistakes eventually.
Was it weird that I read the title as "Shadowbaneing"?
Miss that game.
This could end up being very interesting.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
You know, back in wow, I often thought your chat panel should have a count of people on the server (your faction) and a number of how many have blocked you. Perhaps a little bit too much social engineering with it but I liked the idea. When someone would say crap and started to see his block count go up, he might learn.
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Even then you could use TOR and go to the site to see if your post appears or not to see if you are shadow banned?
Although Trion Worlds is known for trying to silence people, not following their own rules / Code OF Conduct across their games for sure have had a hefty argument with them for that before leaving their poorly designed games and company Used to be good but ruined by developers );.