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Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world

Alpha71 @lemmy.world

2mo ago

Does Lemmy have shadow banning?

I haven't been able to post anything for the last two days. I don't know if I was banned for a bit or not since I received no notice or warning.

If it wasn't a ban what happened?

37 comments

How were you "not able to post anything"? If you noticed you weren't able to post anything (e.g. got an error message), that was (by definition) probably not shadow banning.
- I wasn't getting anything. I would press the post button and it would just endlessly loop and never post.
  
  That isn't shadow banning, it sounds more like a server (performance?) issue on your instance.
  
  Any error code in the web developer console?
  
  That's happened any time I've tried posting from a desktop browser. Works fine from Connect on android.

The Lemmy software doesn't have shadow banning, and in fact has a mod log that is very transparent about moderator actions. The modlog doesn't seem to have anything for you.
- Then I wonder what the problem was?
  
  It was probably just your connection timing out.

Every ban on lemmy is effectively a shadow ban as you don't get notified for it
- Sure about this? I got notification of being banned from the tankie instance for what I think they referred to as western propaganda
  
  Did you point out that the sky is blue?
  
  Was it from a bot or Lemmy itself? If it was from a bot it doesn't really count since admins set that feature up themselves, it's not a part of Lemmy itself.

Most likely a VPN issue as Lemmy.world attempts to block vpn users from creating posts/comments.
You can still upvote/downvote though.
- It's such a lazy removed move to blanket block vpn users. For anyone intent on causing meaningful harm it's trivial to bypass, so the only ones really impacted are the innocent mass of privacy minded people. Unnecessary hassle for people doing nothing wrong.
  
  It's the most popular instance with questionable politics and moderation and this move pushes people to other instances before they even discover deeper issues there. Most instances have zero issues with VPNs, and it doesn't even matter what is the parent instance of community you're posting to. Which means you can post the same stuff into the same place from almost any other instance using VPN.
- Except i don't run it when I'm on lemmy.

It was probably your instance having issues

I cant post if I have protonvpn running, or at least if Im connected to certain proton servers. It could be along those lines - whatever IP you were coming from might be blocked, probably via cloudflare?
- As others have said lemmy.world actively bans anyone using a vpn.
- I have surfshark but I only run it when I'm torrenting. (since that's all VPN's are pretty much good for nowadays.)
  
  VPNs are very useful for many different purposes, just nothing (except torrenting) which you need.

Check the mod log. There's a link to it in the footer.

Might be your home instance is having performance issues, resulting in your posts getting timeouts or bad gateway errors.
You getting any specific error messages from your client when you try to post?

It has banning without message. It is possible your ban only showed up in the modlog.

I question the health of anybody who even has "shadow ban" in their brain when an instance breaks.
- Hey, if you got to enjoy that feature from reddit like me, you'd be paranoid too

37 comments