Shadowbans aren't meant for censorship. It's an artifact of old Reddit design for spammers that hasn't been replaced yet. (I know the CEO mentioned that was on the agenda, hence the improved suspension option)

Hacker News does shadowbans too which I am not happy about, but that's another story.

> Hacker News does shadowbans too which I am not happy about, but that's another story.

We almost never do that anymore except in cases of spammers or new accounts that appear to be trolling, i.e. the cases where telling people you banned them tends to be problematic. Apart from those, we almost always post a comment in the thread saying that we banned the account.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&date...

I have noticed those comments recently and they are much of an improvement. :)

I don't see anything that I would describe as "spamming" in that account's history. I can't say what the feature was meant for, but we can see how it's been used.

If you mean the overview screenshot in the article, keep in mind that there is no timestamp on that screenshot. It's possible that the submissions by that user between when the screenshot was taken and the shadowbox may be more questionable.

They changes their tactics now https://voat.co/v/MeanwhileOnReddit/comments/1083516

This is from 2015. Reddit removed their shadowbans for regular users (still enabled for spammers, I think) [1].

And, by the way, calling out censorship because of 1 shadowban when there's even a subreddit to know if you're shadowbanned (https://www.reddit.com/r/ShadowBan/, appears when you search shadowban reddit) is too much of a stretch, I think.

1: https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/11/reddit-account-suspensions...

I don't know anything about shadowbans, much less changes in policies about them. I only submitted the link because I thought it was an interesting read.

Free speech is a concept of government. Reddit is a for-proft corporation. It's not censorship, it's a business refining its model.

Joke's on you that you thought reddit was anything but.

The joke is on me, I guess. I've never understood how the line is drawn. Freedom of speech and religion are both in amendment one. Free speech is a right, but one can, evidently, open a website and suppress any opinion one chooses. Freedom of religion is a right, but one cannot use religious beliefs to deny gay people their rights. [1] That seems like a double standard to me and I've yet to find a way to reconcile it.

edit: grammar, edit2: supporting story

[1] http://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-orders-colorado-bakery-cater-...

Freedom of speech protects you from government prosecution, with certain limitations like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, etc. It doesn't mean that others (e.g. Reddit) have to give you a platform for your speech.

Freedom of religion won't let you practice something that impinges upon the rights of others or violates a law.

While I 100% agree they aren't doing anything illegal, it's still a shady business practice.

FWIW the "others don't see my posts, only I do" is called "shadow-banning" or "stealth banning": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_banning

The practice involves making a user's contributions invisible to all other users, but visible to themselves, making them less likely to create new accounts to add the same material.

If someone was censoring comments not kind to the pharma industry on that post, you would think they would have also removed the comment that starts

"... horrible horrible medication. don't take it."

I have stopped going on reddit. There is an obvious agenda trying to be pushed in the guise of a purely user driven content aggregator.

Shadow banning _is_ censorship. It causes intellectual decline of a site because over time it reduces the audience to a synchronized minimum of wanted opinions like a communistic party.

The only answer for such a policy is boycott, and to convince also other visitors by verbal propaganda to boycott. There are so many sites in the Internet. We actually don't depend on Reddit and the like.

Everyone has an agenda. techrights.org has an agenda. Hacker news has an agenda (You think you can post whatever you want here and not get banned?).

But most are clear about them, not lying. Also, let's not forget when they called themselves a bastion of free speech, where people can come to share ideas.

Reddit had shadow bans way before Conde Nast. This article acts like it's blown up this huge conspiracy, but only uncovered something that is common knowledge. It has all the conspiratorial fervor of the most witch hunt-y Reddit threads—and it's not a good look.

Ironic how this will be flagged to shit and seen by only a few.