[Ads-l] Shadow-banning vs shadow-promoting

ADSGarson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Fri Aug 12 03:55:36 UTC 2022


Back on June 22, 2012 I posted about the term "shadowban". A 2007
Urban Dictionary entry provides this definition: "Banning a user from
a web forum in such a way that the banned user is unaware of the ban."

https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2012-June/120165.html

Now the term "shadow-promoting" is being used to refer to displaying
and promoting content which is nominally banned on a social network.

Website: Wired
Date: August 10, 2022
Article: TikTok Is 'Shadow-Promoting' Banned Content in Russia
Author: Vittoria Elliott

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-russia-shadow-promotion/

[Begin excerpt]
TikTok Is 'Shadow-Promoting' Banned Content in Russia

The company said it would prevent Russia-based users from uploading
fresh content--but some new videos are still showing up on FYPs.

IN THE WEEKS following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin
criminalized anything it considered "false information" about state
entities or the war in Ukraine. In response, on March 6, TikTok
suspended livestreaming and new content on the app for Russia-based
users. But a new report reveals that certain Russia-based accounts
continue to upload videos to the platform, which in turn serves them
to Russian users. Call it “shadow-promotion.”

That’s the term used by Salvatore Romano, head of research at the
Mozilla-funded digital rights nonprofit Tracking Exposed, which
released the report today. Unlike shadow-banning, where creators post
content that a platform’s algorithms or content moderation suppress,
TikTok’s shadow-promotion keeps videos off of the creators’ accounts,
but promotes those videos to the For You Pages (FYPs) of other users.
“This is something we’ve never seen,” Romano says. In some cases,
certain verified accounts dodged the ban altogether, with new content
appearing both under their accounts and in other users’ feeds.
[End excerpt]

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