The issue of shadow ban has arisen many times regarding Twitter. Elon Musk himself has accepted that the social media platform has done this.
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The term shadow ban has been in discussion for some time now. The owners of Twitter had brought it up for discussion Elon Musk, The reason for the discussion was the revealing documents related to Hunter, son of US President Joe Biden, whose issue was raised by the New York Post, but Twitter blocked that post of this media institution. Elon Musk replied on this whole matter. He said, at that time Twitter had shadow banned the account.
Many times there has been a debate on social media about this. In such a situation, the question arises that what is shadow ban, how much does it change in the account, when did it start?
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What is shadow ban?
Jonathan Jitren, Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University, says that when social media manipulates a user’s post without informing that user, then it is placed in the category of shadow ban. Understand in simple language, when a social media platform blocks its content, post or comment without informing the user, then it is called shadow ban. When this happens, that particular post or comment of the user is not visible to other users.
Questions have also been raised on such activities of social media platforms for a long time. Users say, if their account is brought under the shadow ban, then the exact reason should also be told to them. Transparency is necessary at all times.
The matter first came in 2012
The term shadow ban was first used in 2012, when Reddit users raised questions about banning a link to an article on that platform. It was named Shadow Ban. Now users are raising questions on social media regarding the content which they feel should be on the platform, but has been removed by the social media company.
Is shadow ban legal?
Private companies make their own rules to monitor content, but this becomes a big problem in the case of advertising and free-speech. In the case of social media, whatever content is on the platform is considered to be the responsibility of the same company, so taking advantage of this, many companies block some special content of the user.
Jonathan says, there has been a lot of debate on how right the shadow ban is, and people’s opinions are divided in this matter. At present, social media companies are moderating the content on a large scale, but companies cannot be trusted just on the basis of talk.
The stand of social media companies regarding shadow ban is still not clear. Questions have been raised on this many times. Especially in the case of Twitter. In such a situation, only the users need to be alert.