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Hot take: People keep saying 'shadowbanning' is new, but I saw it happen on a forum back in 2009.
I was active on a small gaming forum that got bought out, and overnight, certain users' posts just stopped showing up in threads unless you were logged in as them. The mods never admitted it, but we all figured it out. It matters because it shows these quiet censorship tricks have been around way before the big social media platforms got big. Has anyone else got an old, clear example of this from before 2010?
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taylorpatel6mo ago
Remember when MySpace let you hide friends?
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morgancarter6mo ago
I ran a music forum on Proboards around 2007 where the same thing happened. A few members who argued with the new admin found their replies invisible to everyone else, but they could still see their own posts when logged in. It created such a weird, silent split in the community until we all compared notes. That experience made me really distrustful of forum software admin panels, because the tools were right there for anyone to use quietly. It was absolutely a form of gaslighting by making people seem like they were talking to themselves.
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adamellis6mo ago
Proboards had a "shadow ban" plugin back then that did exactly this. I always told my mods to never use those tools without a public warning first. It just kills trust and makes people feel crazy.
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