I mean I get it. No one needs to tell you shit.
But why is this used instead of perma banning?
I’m curious.
Thoughts?
Its because when people get banned they often just make a new account to circumvent the ban. Shadow banning means they dont realize right away and continue to post their bullshit on that account until they figure it out. Some people might figure it out quickly, but in many cases it will take months or more to realize. That person is effectively silenced in the mean time. Its only a temporary solution, but it apparently works pretty well. If its a bot they might not ever figure it out.
Bots would likely figure it out quickly as they usually work on tandem with other bots boosting their own posts and comments which will fail if it can’t find the other bots content.
That depends on if the developer programmed an exception for this scenario what that exception does, otherwise it would likely just crash. As for the developer they’d just make another account for the bot to use, and likely try and figure out where they went wrong to avoid being banned again in the future.
they still get a traffic for the website while you don’t suspect anything…
Accounts are free and easy to make so if someone’s banned they’ll just make a new one and circumvent the ban. If you are shadow banned them you won’t circumvent it.
It’s most probably because they don’t want the user count to drop.
Also, if someone is shadow banned, they’re still actively browsing and reading articles and clicking links, so could be other reasons to keep them around too.
Shadow banning is completely shit, I agree. It’s very malicious.