And that is why social media platforms' widespread use of shadow banning–the practice of showing users their removed commentary as if it is not removed–is so perplexing. How did we come to adopt a practice that is the antithesis of believing in bottom-up solutions? Every day, platforms remove or demote millions of comments, and quite often, those comments' authors have no idea any action was taken because the system hides those actions.

Platforms have long held that shadow banning is necessary to deal with spam, but shadow bans do not fool bots. Shockingly, it turns out that when platforms talk about "spam," they're referring to content written by you and me, genuine users. But they have not been upfront about this definition.

In 2015 Steve Huffman, Reddit's CEO, returned to lead the platform he co-founded. He submitted an "Ask Me Anything" post to Reddit, where one user asked:

Huffman, who goes by the handle spez, initially responded:

Despite Huffman’s justifications, shadow bans are just a surreptitious attempt to moderate content. And, unfortunately, according to journalist Cory Doctorow, "there is no security in obscurity." In other words, relying on secrecy only benefits rogue actors who make it their profession to discover secrets.

As a programmer and web developer myself, I reject the argument that shadow bans are useful against spam bots. If mere secrecy fooled bots, then captchas would play no role in authenticating humans. Further, it would be trivial for a programmer like me to build a bot that checks the status of its own content; in less than a second, a bot can retrieve a web page from the perspective of another user and discover if its posts have been moderated or banned.

What's more, once bot-authors discover how shadow bans work, they can reproduce content faster than humans. Thus, when platforms use secretive moderation techniques, bots gain an advantage while humans are elbowed out.

Genuine users may sometimes go years without discovering they have been shadow banned by a platform. When users do discover that some content they have been posting has been invisible to all other users, they say:

But relatively few users discover their shadow bans. Therefore, a shadow ban is more like a captcha that defeats humans.

Imagine living under a government with a secret code of conduct. If you are not close with the authorities, you will not know what behavior is acceptable. Maybe you aren't able to open a bank account and the banks give you spurious reasons for that, or you can't travel or register to vote.

Citizens would object to such obvious inequalities imposed by the government, and they also expect transparency when interacting with each other. For instance, I have the right to remove an offensive person from my own home, but choosing to instead shame them behind their back is awkward, ineffectual, and likely to cause more problems down the road. As a result, society discourages secretive shaming.

Mr. Huffman claimed real users on Reddit should never be shadow banned, yet his platform is shadow banning tons of content daily. A few weeks after Huffman's post, another Reddit staffer contradicted the CEO by stating that shadow bans were still used against real people:

But that is not Reddit's only kind of shadow ban. Currently, whenever a volunteer moderator removes a comment, Reddit shows its author the comment as if no action has been taken against it. So when Huffman said "real users should never be shadowbanned," he was glossing over the fact that all comment removals on Reddit have always, by default, been shadow bans. Huffman never clarified that either he or his staff misspoke, despite users pointing out the hypocrisy. The false notion that shadow bans help combat spam has continued to propagate ever since. Virtually every other platform has adopted secretive content moderation as their standard policy.

Years later, Huffman still claims shadow bans are useful against "spam." Sadly, this exception for shadow banning turns out to be a gaping hole. When I look up a random Redditor, their removal history almost always reveals removed commentary. And, chances are, moderators did not notify them of the removal.

Reddit and Facebook both allow volunteer moderators to shadow ban other users, yet the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave them stars for "providing meaningful notice to users of every content takedown and account suspension."

Further, Reddit inspired Facebook's use of shadow bans, according to former Reddit CTO Jeremy Edberg:

Other platforms like YouTube, Twitter/X and TikTok have followed suit. Thus, shadow banning was popularized on today's platforms by Huffman's implementation on Reddit.

In 2018, the EFF appeared to lead an effort to hold platforms accountable called the Santa Clara Principles. But these principles do not require platforms to notify users when content "amounts to spam." Even Europe's Digital Services Act, which purports to ensure a "transparent online environment," permits shadow banning "bots" and "fake accounts." And, the Washington Post's coverage of shadow banning does not dispute the idea that shadow bans help "tamp down spam."

But not only do shadow bans not fool bots, they also do not fool the real users who are repeat offenders. One only needs to search r/ModSupport for "ban evader" to reveal near daily posts from moderators requesting additional support from Reddit. Shadow bans are only effective against good-faith users, and they are only used by moderators who believe that secretly removing content is ethical. Thus, ironically, shadow bans end up empowering bots and ban evaders.

Moderators themselves rarely use the publicly understood term "shadow ban." Instead, they claim to "quietly remove" content, as one Reddit admin put it here:

Moderators may also argue for exceptions. One responded to Huffman's comment:

Some time later, Huffman modified his original comment to remove "or moderators," so that it now read:

With this edit, Huffman allowed volunteer moderators to continue shadow banning users. That is a massive problem. Ordinarily, a company would have to hire more staff to perform such work–even the best AI will never outmatch a human's ability to determine the meaning of comments. AI is, after all, trained on human-generated data. So, a platform's ability to manipulate discourse by allowing its own employees to shadow ban is limited. But when platforms and civil society permit secrecy by volunteers, increased use of shadow bans do not result in increased costs. Without pushback from society, instances of shadow banning thus become unlimited.

Twitter's former head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, has claimed that X cannot disclose the true status of its shadow banned users without first categorizing the reasons for the shadow bans. But this argument is a straw man. It ignores the fact that platforms can (and should) notify users about bans even when reasons for bans are unavailable. Presumably Roth, upon reviewing those reasons, would continue to shadow ban certain users. If so, he still promotes society's "exceptional" use of shadow bans where its exercise is, in fact, unlimited.

Some Reddit moderators also claim that mere notification is too laborious and thus impractical. There is even one content moderation researcher who admits to "shadow ban[ning] people on a regular basis." There are likely more researchers who think similarly, given that Reddit moderation is heavily researched by several of r/science's 1,500+ moderators.

Despite what many content moderators say, society is better off without shadow bans. That way, everyone can see the consequences of their actions. Those who claim that shadow bans fool bots are just inventing another straw man. Thus, civil society must demand that platforms renounce their use of such deceptive tooling. Eradicating shadow bans will advance users' freedom to communicate without hampering platforms' ability to address bot-generated spam.

For example, when a YouTube channel removes a comment, the comment remains visible to its author as if nobody intervened:

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Social media services employ thousands and enable legions more to secretly suppress your content. Some people volunteer to “moderate” for over 10 hours per day. Even users themselves unknowingly participate when they click “report,” since reports often automatically suppress content without notifying authors. Volunteering to moderate in itself is not harmful, but secretly removing “disinformation” is not doing your civic duty.

The most pernicious censorship is the kind we don’t discover. Services who refer to themselves as “a true marketplace of ideas,” and places to express “beliefs without barriers,” have really been growing a new red army aimed directly at free speech principles. But your voice can stop them: Trustworthy services do not secretly suppress their users.

How it works

Savvy internet users already know of the shadowban, where a service hides a user’s content from everyone except that person. However, services can also shadow remove individual comments. You might receive replies to some content while other commentary appears to fall flat. Such lonely, childless comments may truly have been uninteresting, or they may have been secretly suppressed. Moreover, many moderators suppress significantly more content than they admit.

Reddit had an estimated 74,260 moderators in 2017, according to the developer of Reddit’s most popular moderation tool, the Moderator Toolbox. Crucially, all moderator-removed comments on Reddit work the same way as YouTube’s.

As a result, removed content appears in the recent history of over 50% of Reddit users, and most users are still in the dark. Reveddit, a free site I built to show people their secretly removed Reddit content, sees over 300,000 monthly active users. Yet that is still only a fraction of Reddit’s 430 million.

On Facebook, users can “hide comment.” TikTok can make content “visible to self.” Truth Social does it, and there is even an MIT Press textbook from 2011 that promotes “several ways to disguise a gag or ban.” Twitter also continues to action content without disclosure. Such actions are unlikely to be discovered by low-profile accounts since they lack the followers to alert them.

Social media services attract volunteer moderators with ease. After all, the weapons of secret suppression are “free.” One only needs to commit their time. Then they can influence discussions of guns, abortion, gender, or even preferred political candidates. Plus, a former Reddit CEO says everyone does it. So why shouldn’t we all?

In contrast to what the Internet’s red army says, trolls and bots benefit when services secretly suppress users. Trolls and bots represent persistent actors who are far more likely to discover and use secretive tooling. Trolls justify their own mischief by the existence of mischief elsewhere, a sort of eye-for-an-eye mentality. And bots are just automated trolls or advertisers, none of whom secrecy fools. Yet secretive services overwhelmingly dupe good-faith users.

If anyone best understood the harms of secret suppression, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did. He survived the Soviet Union’s forced labor camps where millions died. In his epic The Gulag Archipelago, he argued that the Soviet security apparatus based all of its arrests on Article 58, which forbid “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” Police relied on this anti-free speech code to imprison whomever they wished on false charges. Article 58 thus removed truth and transparency from the justice system.

Similarly, many of today’s moderators favor advanced enforcement tools that rely upon secrecy. These tools enable a forum’s leaders to conjure up an agreeable consensus for their audience. That “consensus” makes the group appear strong and popular. The popularity then attracts more subscribers, both supporters and critics alike. Moderators must work overtime to maintain a copacetic appearance; otherwise, they risk losing what they built. Finally, subscribers who challenge the secrecy are suppressed by group leaders, and group leaders discourage members from promoting ideas shared by outsiders.

This may all be normal behavior as people strive to influence each other. However, new communications tech always presents a unique challenge: Early adopters wield significantly more influence than late entrants. Then, power players like evangelists and “tyrants” can enslave in ways that were thought to exist only in history books.

One could thank these early power players. The harms were going to appear sooner or later anyway, and their efforts help us discover the harms sooner.

But we have a role to play too. Left unchallenged, a censorial Internet enslaves both users and moderators alike to become ideological warriors. Ironically, we have promoted communications systems that do not foster good communication. But good communication is essential to well-functioning communities, so we must do something. The question is what to do or say. Unfortunately, the easy route of framing the problem as “us versus them” would merely strengthen existing power players.

Even Solzhenitsyn could not draw a clear line between his oppressors and the oppressed. Instead he wrote, “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Put another way, we are each equally vulnerable, and we must guard against the temptation to control things we cannot. True progress comes when we acknowledge each of us is capable of wrongdoing.

These days, services de-amplify you for being disagreeable. We have not yet gotten to the heart of why we silo ourselves online. Nor do we understand why protesters increasingly resort to the heckler’s veto violence, or why we must replicate services to keep people friendly.

Social media sites claim to be our new public square. However, secret suppression represents indecision, not leadership. It is an attempt to appease all parties that reduces everything to chaos.

Fortunately, chaos is inherently weak against truth. Article 58 required complete secrecy about conditions in the Gulags as well as an army of subdued enforcers. Solzhenitsyn left a warning:

We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future.

We must publicly condemn secret suppression and repel defenses of it. A moderator of r/AgainstHateSubreddits recently argued that my censorship-revealing website "enables interference with moderation of the site." In other words, he does not want you to know when he censors you. I pushed back and he ran out of things to say. I seek out these conversations all the time. Those who cannot coherently argue may try to otherwise discredit you. But the truth is on your side.

We must also push back against the popular viewpoint that some cases require secret suppression. That is the status quo. Without exception, trustworthy communication services do not secretly suppress their users.

A well-known disinformation researcher, Renée DiResta, has argued more than once that you can both “inform users” and still secretly suppress them, and I’ve seen moderators declare the same. But hiding and disclosing information are inherently contradictory. Still, such misrepresentations can become popular “wisdom” if we fail to challenge them.

Secret suppression divides us. The average person does not imagine it exists. Similar to how my young daughter consumes bread, the practice eats away at the middle. It leaves behind disconnected fringes, both within ourselves and in wider society. In this vacuous environment, propaganda thrives.

While the Soviet Union got “all worked up,” as Solzhenitsyn put it, about what took place in Nazi Germany, it refused to address its own abuses. That would be “digging up the past.” Sadly, one can say the same of the West today. We regularly criticize censorship in Russia and China while ignoring our own faults. And it proves unsatisfying: we still fight amongst ourselves!

Solzhenitsyn’s book demolished the moral credibility of Communism in the West, according to Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. We can do the same to secretive services simply by telling the truth about secret suppression. When people violate the rules, teach them. With transparent moderation, users become part of the solution and have more respect for moderators.

We need not take up arms against each other. Instead, we can redress our own issues by talking about them. “Truth has value just because it’s true,” says Johnny Sanders, a licensed professional counselor. The truth is reliable, so let’s use it.

Earlier this month, Twitter “throttled”—did not censor—a controversial documentary by Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire, but chances are it has censored you.

Netizens are right to be concerned about what social media sites throttle. But contrary to popular belief, you do not see the same thing everyone else sees. Platforms often do not tell you when they throttle your content.

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This has been true since the dawn of the internet. In order to escape insights from users, platforms stopped informing less-followed accounts of throttling. And to make matters worse, civil society groups who you might expect to call out this behavior instead provide exceptions for it through tough-sounding “principles.”

Secretive throttling satisfies the camps who want to censor our content, but it leaves us in the dark. As a result, we waste time fighting with each other about what platforms throttle. We should instead focus on how they throttle. Does Twitter always allow you to discover the throttling of your own content?

Despite an earlier agreement between Twitter and The Daily Wire, the platform at first limited, then later restored users’ ability to share the film, “What is a Woman?”

Twitter’s actions raised questions. Was this Censorship? Or, did the resulting news and massive viewership cancel out any “censorship” that might have occurred?

A conversation: Censorship on Twitter?

The following day, Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee, joined a Spaces conversation to discuss censorship and free speech amidst Twitter’s throttling of the film. Behavioral scientist Caroline Orr Bueno asked, “What is censorship to you?”1

In response, Dillon pointed to his recent interview with Elon Musk in which Musk had said “there’s a massive amount of secret suppression going on at Facebook, Google, Instagram…”

Participants could not agree upon what kinds of content should have free rein. All accepted that government-directed throttling would have constituted censorship; and none argued in favor of a right to post spam, copyrighted materials, or incitements to violence. So what is censorship?

In the era of social media, censorship is not simply defined by whether or not the government is involved. That is, the who question alone no longer provides a clear answer. Consider this novel definition:

Censorship on social media is when the author of a throttled post does not know someone took action against their content.

The crucial point is how platforms throttle content, not what they throttle. It is not censorship when a platform informs authors of their throttled posts. In this post, “throttled” refers to all forms of content moderation including removals and demotions.

Here is how The Daily Wire’s tweet appeared to the public shortly after they posted it:

The gray “Visibility limited” box almost certainly appeared for The Daily Wire’s account. Even if it did not appear for them while logged in, the expectation for this release was so great that they would have immediately found out. Therefore, by the above definition, Twitter’s throttling in this instance was not censorship.

How can that be? Here is a tweet of my own, once visible to me but not others:

This was censorship. Twitter throttled my tweets and hid that from me. I only discovered it because I track and build tools that reveal this behavior on another platform. I reported it and Twitter restored the tweets one week later. Other times, Twitter quietly hides replies behind a button, “Show additional replies, including those that may contain offensive content.”2

Most users do not realize when this happens and thus cannot address it. Even worse, the throttling we do see masks the censorship we do not.

If you still think Twitter’s throttling of Walsh’s film was censorship, we can yet make progress towards free speech online by agreeing on a lesser definition:

The most pernicious censorship on social media occurs when the author of a throttled post does not know someone took action against their content.

Does this really happen so often to be concerned about?

Nearly every social media user has probably written a secretly throttled comment at some point. In my tests, over 50% of Reddit users may have no idea that their accounts reveal recently removed comments.3 The throttling you see is only the tip of the iceberg.

Some argue these are monopolies who control our public square, and that everything they throttle matters. Dillon seemed to make this point when he said, “Private companies have to honor the commitment that they make to users on the platform.”4 Twitter’s Hateful Conduct policy states,

Twitter’s mission is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information, and to express their opinions and beliefs without barriers.

“An argument could be made that they're defrauding you,” Dillon added. Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy made a similar point when he suggested “all opinions are fair game.”

Others may argue in favor of secretive throttling. They don’t write hateful things. They just want platforms to throttle other people’s hateful rhetoric by whatever means necessary.

I respond to such propositions with three points:

• When platforms hide throttling from authors, the practice is far more widespread.

• Prioritizing your own content helps everyone communicate better.

• There is another way. Talk about it.

When platforms hide throttling from authors, the practice is far more widespread.

Secretive throttling has no oversight. Neither the author nor the public is aware that someone throttled their content. There are no checks, therefore it happens all the time.

Transparent throttling is fine. People can learn the rules, dispute a rule, or move to other forums. Secretive throttling is like purgatory. There is no learning and no movement.

Today’s online realm runs a real risk of repeating history. Social media is our new public square, and millions of posts may be secretly throttled per day.5 That leads to pockets of tyranny that amalgamate to form larger ones.

Warnings that tyranny could emerge from within society came from 19th-century philosophers Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill. They wrote of “tyranny of the majority” and “tyranny of the prevailing opinion.”6 To de Tocqueville, the "germ of tyranny" starts small. Germs also spread easily and need a host. The internet is such a host, but it need not be.

Prioritizing your own content helps everyone communicate better.

Naturally, people want to know what social media sites throttle. Yet they falsely assume they can discover this. As Shireen Mitchell, founder of Stop Online Violence Against Women, put it, “There are plenty of voices that haven't been heard before. You all are not hearing them because they have been soft banned or kept quiet.”7

We do not have a true picture of what platforms throttle. Our understanding relies upon those who have both a big following and dare to say something unpopular. But there are far too few such people to represent all viewpoints.

Further compounding the issue, a platform may choose not to throttle someone with a high profile. Or it may intentionally throttle a high-profile individual’s content in order to amplify it, as some on the call speculated about the “censorship” of Walsh’s film.8

One thing is certain. Focusing on how platforms throttle others is unhelpful. Just like during an in-flight emergency we secure our own oxygen before helping others, we must first secure the integrity of our own content. A truer picture of how platforms throttle others will naturally follow.

There is another way. Talk about it.

You might say that’s impossible. Social media platforms are monopolies and they are doing this secretly. Surely we need the government to step in.

But that would be a mistake. Freedom of speech is a protection from government, not something they provide. Government is neither the source of, nor the solution to the problem, and that is a good thing. If We broke it, We can fix it.

In 2018 when I began building Reveddit, a site that shows users their secretly removed Reddit comments, I was not sure how it would land. Since then, its reception has reaffirmed my belief that applying free speech principles online improves conversations. When people talk about secretive throttling, communities change for the better.

On the Spaces call, the following exchange occurred:

• Journalist Brian Krassenstein said shadow banning is “the biggest issue.”9

• User Brick_Suit responded, “Yeah I agree I just don't think they've had time to implement that yet. I don't expect them to have that now in this time frame, but I'd like to see them make progress on that as time goes on.”1011

• Krassenstein agreed, “Yeah that’s fair.”

If people give excuses, don’t be a pushover. It is never appropriate to misinform the author of a throttled post.

Concerningly, advocates of secretive throttling often find justification for its use in addressing harassment. After the call, Bueno tweeted that harassment is among “the most insidious forms of censorship.” Harassment should be addressed, however, hiding consequences from harassers is not the solution. That would leave us unprepared for offline conversations and contribute to the “manufactured consensus” that Bueno laments in the same tweet. We can instead ask platforms to apply consequences that are visible to authors of violative content.

I am prepared to make the case against secretive throttling with anyone at any time, in any place, and so can you. As President Abraham Lincoln said in closing at his second inaugural address,

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish, a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.12

Let us strive on.

What do I mean by shadow moderation? That is when your comment gets removed or demoted and it still appears to you as if no intervention occurred. Most people commenting on the internet do not discover when this happens. As a result, it happens all the time.

In 2018 I discovered that all removed comments on Reddit are effectively shadow removals. I had been a regular commenter for years and was shocked to discover the deception. I figured there was not much point in trying to create or promote any other software while such authoritarian measures were in place, so I launched a website called Reveddit to show users their secretly removed content. Here is my Reddit account’s Reveddit page, for example, and here are the views of a removed comment on Reddit from the perspective of its author, other users, and moderators:

As you can see, there is no indication to the comment’s author that any action has been taken against their content.

After building and sharing Reveddit, I began to piece together just how common this practice is. Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok all have similar tools, as do many blogs and online forums. Twitter just announced that they will start showing labels on some violative tweets, and while that is a welcome development, we cannot be certain they will do so in every case. Where does that leave us?

In deciding how to proceed, it may help to investigate where this began. Jeff Atwood's 2011 post titled Suspension, Ban or Hellban? provides a good overview. Essentially, the concept has been around since the 1980s and keeps getting reinvented with different terminology. Those in-the-know may refer to it as a bozo filter or a shadowban. Samantha Cole's 2018 Where Did the Concept of 'Shadow Banning' Come From? is another good reference for those looking to dive deep.

Here is an archive of the blog post discussed in the video.

Google’s Buzz is long gone, but shadow moderation is not a relic. It is very much alive. Over 50% of active Reddit commenters have had comments removed that they likely do not know about. You can see this by opening Reveddit.com/random in ten tabs. Five or more will have recently removed comments. It is so common that I now believe most social media users have probably been moderated at some point or another without their knowledge.

I think of this as a sort of prisoner's dilemma. We can continue bozoing each other, thereby bozoing ourselves, or we can decide not to because doing so gives bozos the very tool they need to replicate.

So the next time you want to criticize content moderation, don't think about what is removed, think about how it is removed. When it is done transparently, you are given a chance to adjust behavior or bring your comments elsewhere, and that is a good thing.