Browse Definitions :
Definition

shadow banning (shadowban)

Shadow banning, in social media and discussion forums, is the administrative practice of making a particular user's posts visible only to that user. Instead of notifying a user that his or her user generated content (UGC) has been blocked, the administrator simply prevents anyone else from viewing the user's content.   

The goal of shadow banning is to encourage an undesirable contributor, such as a spammer or cryptojacker, to leave a group voluntarily because no one is interacting with their posts. The usual practice is for a moderator to notify a user that their contributions will no longer be accepted, but because the offender can still re-register under another user name, some administrators prefer to shadow ban offending contributors instead of outright banning them. To the offender, who is able to see his or her own posts, everything seems to be working as it should be. To everyone else in the online community, the offender becomes invisible. 

Shadow banning is controversial because it allows an administrator or moderator to effectively become a censor and prevent specific users from interacting with other members of an online community on an equal basis. In January 2018, Project Veritas (PV) accused Twitter of systematically censoring certain individual's tweets by making their posts visible to the user's followers, but no one else. Instagram has also been accused of shadow banning members by using biased algorithms and not including certain hashtags in search. 

See also: shadow app, shadow IT, data shadow

This was last updated in July 2018

Continue Reading About shadow banning (shadowban)

Networking
  • firewall as a service (FWaaS)

    Firewall as a service (FWaaS), also known as a cloud firewall, is a service that provides cloud-based network traffic analysis ...

  • private 5G

    Private 5G is a wireless network technology that delivers 5G cellular connectivity for private network use cases.

  • NFVi (network functions virtualization infrastructure)

    NFVi (network functions virtualization infrastructure) encompasses all of the networking hardware and software needed to support ...

Security
  • virus (computer virus)

    A computer virus is a type of malware that attaches itself to a program or file. A virus can replicate and spread across an ...

  • Certified Information Security Manager (CISM)

    Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) is an advanced certification that indicates that an individual possesses the ...

  • cryptography

    Cryptography is a method of protecting information and communications using codes, so that only those for whom the information is...

CIO
  • B2B (business to business)

    B2B (business-to-business) is a type of commerce involving the exchange of products, services or information between businesses, ...

  • return on investment (ROI)

    Return on investment (ROI) is a crucial financial metric investors and businesses use to evaluate an investment's efficiency or ...

  • big data as a service (BDaaS)

    Big data as a service (BDaS) is the delivery of data platforms and tools by a cloud provider to help organizations process, ...

HRSoftware
  • talent acquisition

    Talent acquisition is the strategic process an organization uses to identify, recruit and hire the people it needs to achieve its...

  • human capital management (HCM)

    Human capital management (HCM) is a comprehensive set of practices and tools used for recruiting, managing and developing ...

  • Betterworks

    Betterworks is performance management software that helps workforces and organizations to improve manager effectiveness and ...

Customer Experience
  • martech (marketing technology)

    Martech (marketing technology) refers to the integration of software tools, platforms, and applications designed to streamline ...

  • transactional marketing

    Transactional marketing is a business strategy that focuses on single, point-of-sale transactions.

  • customer profiling

    Customer profiling is the detailed and systematic process of constructing a clear portrait of a company's ideal customer by ...

Close