My understanding is that mods can silently remove content from their subreddits, but it will still show up in your comment-history. However, admins can silently remove content and it will NOT be in your comment history. Well, when I’m logged out, I noticed some of my comments were “removed” but when I’m logged in they show up. Looking at the comments more closely, I don’t believe they broke any rules…at least not site-wide rules. I received no notification that they were removed either.
Further, these comments ALL related to the Trump/Zelensky interview. I get the need to moderate online communities, but there’s something particularly dystopian about quietly censoring someone for expressing political-speech you don’t like, and doing it in such a way that they (theoretically) don’t even realize they’ve been censored (if they’re not weird paranoid fucks like me). You’ve just secretly put a bubble around them, all for the crime of political speech you don’t like.
Here are some screenshots to verify what I’m saying:
https://i.imgur.com/kff8INQ.png
…
And so the same thing happened when I posted this exact post (above the “…”) in another sub on Reddit…one I participate in regularly. And here’s how that looks:
Yup that’s shadowbanning for ya.
I think it’s only on certain subreddits though?
So /r/law was in the link above as [removed] and I just tried posting something VERY innocuous there, and here’s what happened within SECONDS:
And it doesn’t happen always on /r/marchagainstnazis, after the BS:
I think a shadowban used to be all or nothing, but now it’s possible on a sub by sub basis and possibly even temporarily.
If a person who is shadowbanned tries to post a comment, a moderator can approve that comment so it shows up.