That they are happening to users at all is evidence of either an unreported change in internal policy or high level vigilante modding. And as users, there is no way to find out how many are affected by this.
Another issue exists where after a person discovers their shadowban, they request its removal and are denied -- because there was no note left for why they were banned. What if it were placed by a Reddit mod and not a sub mod? How could anyone make a reasonable appeal in that case?
Their opaqueness is why shadowbans are effective, but mods treating user appeals like gag orders with top secret clearances is not in the spirit of their duties. After a user discovers their shadowban, it's no longer effective, so there is no reason not to disclose information to them about it during their appeal.
Opening the appeals process so users can see for themselves why they were banned, reversing appeals against noteless bans without contest, limiting the duration of all bans not made against spam/bots, a system of blind review, and increasing mod accountability would all serve to strengthen users' ability to stay active on the site without compromising the intended function of the shadowban.
It's actually an anti-spam measure, because when you post while being shadowbanned you see your posts, but nobody else does. That means you could be posting for a long time and not even know all of your posts are actually invisible.
That's not just telling someone to fuck off the site. That's actually erasing them from the site because they won't even make a new account - they'll keep posting and not even know they're invisible.
As what happened on Reddit last week: http://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/351buo/tifu_by_posting...
And it's something that - at the risk of repeating myself - Hacker News also does.
But we have no idea if it was "just criticism", or if it was worse.
Buddy Fletcher, husband of Reddit CEO Ellen Pao, is being described as being the operator of Ponzi scheme
~144 million dollars of a pension fund was lost
Ellen Pao is now accused of frivolous lawsuits to try and stay afloat and some other shit. Seeing as she is a CEO of a large company and has a fraudster for a husband I think it's safe to say we have a textbook ASPD/Sociopath on our hands
It's trivial to detect - literally as simple as seeing if the user page exists when logged out (or just not sending the login cookie).
It doesn't matter if it's reasonable or not as long as it isn't ultimately harmful to the person.
If you dox someone or follow them around for a length of time attacking them, you should be banned for it as it creates a hostile environment.
But that is a far cry from telling someone in no uncertain terms that you think their opinion is ridiculous.
Personally, I've been wanting a reddit alternative for a while, but everything out there sucks in some manner (don't get me started on hubski...). I would love for this to push enough people onto the other platforms for the content to be there. I doubt it will, but that doesn't stop me from wishing it would happen.
That's your opinion on it. Reddit, it would appear, has a different opinion. As, I believe, would the admins of Hacker News.