Facebook says the United Australia partys page does not violate the social media giants community standards despite carrying prominent content from Craig Kelly, whose accounts have been banned for breaching the social media companys misinformation policy.

Last month, Labors Tim Watts asked the social media behemoth to explain how advertisements fronted by Kelly the former Liberal and now federal parliamentary leader of the UAP could still be in wide circulation on the platform when his page is banned.

Kellys profile was suspended for a number of weeks earlier this year over posts promoting hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and questioning the effectiveness of masks. Facebook then made the ban permanent in April.

Before he was removed from the platform, the outspoken MP had amassed more than 86,000 followers and was frequently one of the highest performers among politicians on Facebook.

Kelly quit the Liberal party in February in part because he wanted to keep posting about unproven treatments for Covid-19.

Facebook has now responded to Watts, the shadow assistant minister for cybersecurity. Mia Garlick, Facebooks director of policy in Australia and New Zealand, told the Labor frontbencher the different approaches in enforcement reflected the fact the accounts had different purposes.

As a matter of public record, under our harmful health misinformation policy, we have removed the Facebook and Instagram accounts representing Mr Craig Kelly MP for repeated violations of our community standards, Garlick said in correspondence seen by Guardian Australia.

Garlick told Watts Facebook had also removed additional accounts that appear to have been created with the purpose of evading this enforcement.

But this did not extend to the UAPs accounts because the page does not currently violate community standards on repeat offending due to the difference in purpose of the banned accounts (to specifically represent Mr Kelly) and the purpose of this page (to cover the United Australia party more generally, including other candidates).

In his complaint to Facebook in September, Watts noted the UAP had launched a new campaign on both Facebook and Google, spending more than $500,000 on advertising in a month. Watts suggested the conduct amounted to ban evasion.

It is difficult to understand how Facebooks rules could allow for an individual to be banned from Facebook for repeatedly sharing misinformation about Covid-19, while also allowing that individual to return to the platform as the leader of a group with plans for a massive social media advertising spend, Watts said at that time.

The Labor frontbencher told parliament on Monday of the 19 videos on the UAP page, 14 are of the member for Hughes he voices them, he authorises them under Australian electoral law and hes spent tens of thousands of dollars advertising them.

Watts said it wasnt good enough for Facebook to say the activity was acceptable because the UAP had a different purpose to Kellys now deleted account.

He said Facebook had said previously it would take down new pages in the voice of a previously banned individual.

Im sick of long statements from Facebook that say a lot but ultimately declare that they arent going to do anything, he said.

Kelly told Guardian Australia on Monday he was close to launching legal proceedings against Facebook for defamation and breach of contract. Kelly contends the platform defamed him when Facebook said he had been banned for spreading misinformation.

He said he was unaware about the removal of additional accounts referenced by Garlick in her response to Watts, although he said prior to the ban he had two Facebook accounts, and both had been removed.

Of Watts complaint to Facebook, Kelly said: It is very disappointing that another member of the Australian parliament has attempted to declare me an un-person. Mr Watts conduct is an affront to free speech.

He said Watts needed to take a good hard look at himself.

Watts said on Monday Kelly was entitled to say whatever he likes here meaning in the parliament. But he said he should not be entitled amplification by an algorithm that advantages the divisive and the outrageous.

Garlick told Watts Facebook continued to actively work to combat the sharing of Covid-related misinformation in Australia, and we are committed to take an aggressive approach in response.

More:

Facebook says Craig Kellys content on United Australia party page OK after banning MP - The Guardian Australia

If youve noticed that your engagement on TikTok has taken a massive dip, theres a chance you may have been shadowbanned. But what are shadowbans, and are they actually real?

As TikTok increasingly becomes peoples go-to platform for content, more and more creators are flocking to the app to try and build their presence there.

This means that there are plenty of people who are keeping a close eye on their engagement, and often notice when there is a sharp decrease in likes, views, and sometimes comments.

Some attribute this phenomenon to shadowbans, but fixing the issue is not an entirely straightforward process.

Shadowbanning refers to a platform or service blocking or partially blocking a users visibility or access on a certain site without officially informing them.

Its a phenomenon seen across multiple different sites, such as Instagram, however some debate whether shadowbans on TikTok are actually real.

You may find that your videos are no longer appearing on peoples For You Pages, leading to a drop in engagement, which may happen if you post spam or potential adult content (though none of this has been confirmed by TikTok.)

If you suspect that your videos are being hidden from peoples For You Pages, there are a few steps you can try to attempt to resolve the issue.

However, its worth noting that none of these fixes guarantee that the issue will be resolved.

TikTok users are continuously mystified by the concept of shadowbans, but as of yet the platform hasnt released specific information regarding them.

Read more:

TikTok shadowbans: What is a shadowban and how to fix it - Dexerto

Social Media Mural

In 2021, Instagram will be the most popular social media platform. Recent statistics show that the platform now boasts over 1 billion monthly active users. With this many eyes on their content, influencers can reap great rewards through sponsored posts if they have a large enough following with this many eyes on their content.

Over the last few years, it has become clear that Instagram has an algorithmic bias towards certain accounts. Marginalized groups such as LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC have repeatedly been vocal about seeing their reach shrink significantly under the current system.

The question for today then becomes: How do we effectively grow our Instagram account in the age of algorithmic bias? Instagram expert and AI growth specialist Faisal Shafique help us answer this question utilizing his experience growing his @fact account to about 8M followers while also helping major, edgy brands like Fashion Nova to over 20M.

Faisal has been actively involved in Instagram since 2012 when as a medical student in college, he identified Instagram as a powerful platform of the future. Faisal took the unconventional route to start @fact as a medical student and steadily began learning the ropes.

After graduation, Faisal decided to follow his passion for social media rather than pursue a career in medicine. That singular decision has led him on a rather exciting path to becoming one of the most recognized influencers on Instagram and a consultant for many top companies and celebrities that he has helped build staggering platforms on Instagram.

Having grown his platform to about 8 million followers and helping others achieve even more, Faisal has had to stick with Instagram through many seasons and the plethora of changes in their algorithm over the last decade,

In his own words, because of the constantly changing algorithms, it is very easy to get left behind on these platforms. Success on Instagram often has a lot to do with keeping your hand on the pulse, and to build enviable followership you often need help.

Companies like Instagram use algorithms to dictate what your feed should look like- which means that you're only seeing posts from people or brands that they want or brands that pay them. In this article, we try to understand a little about how this algorithm works.

One of the main misconceptions that creators have is the assumption that there is only one Instagram algorithm. According to Instagram themselves, we use a variety of algorithms, classifiers, and processes, each with its purpose.

Faisal explains that Instagrams algorithm can calculate a score of interest, which calculates how likely someone is to interact with a post.

There are four key factors that Instagram leverages to calculate a score of interest.

Shafique explains further; The Instagram algorithm will give your post more visibility if; your posts are set up to make people spend more time on it. If it is likely to be liked, commented on or saved, and if it contains CTAs that enable people to take actions like tapping on your profile.

Instagram is constantly identifying what its users are interested in and adapting its feed to reflect that. Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, admits as much, We add and remove signals and predictions over time, working to get better at surfacing what youre interested in,

This constant evolution is responsible for the difficulty in breaking into the scene and remaining constantly relevant. It is also partly responsible for the algorithmic bias that has become a major complaint about Instagram. How can users understand the algorithm and keep in touch with it? And how fair is the algorithm to certain kinds of content and people groups?

The Instagram algorithm is one of the most talked-about topics in tech right now. The company has been under scrutiny for being biased against influencers and artists whose content doesn't align with specific values (usually, posts that are sexual or political) or whose views align with or promote LGBTQIA per BIPOC philosophies.

The term shadowbanning has become popularized as a term that explains one way Instagram purportedly propagates this bias. Shadowbanning is an unexplained throttling of an account so that its reach is limited, its posts are taking down, or its followers cannot find them.Influencers such as Giampaolo Ienna have been affected by this trend. Ienna says he has been unable to grow his brand properly due to an unfair racial bias of the algorithm.

Instagram has since denied that shadowbanning is a real thing, but a deep look at their operations reveals that though the term shadowbanning may not be an Instagram-approved term, the practice is somewhat real. Instagram does not necessarily have people picking out posts and banning them, but their algorithms are trained on datasets many suspect to be biased and unenlightened.

Faisal Shafique

For instance, Instagram polices sexuality with very little nuance, finding it difficult to differentiate adult entertainment from sex-ed, sex-health, or sex-commentary. Ads for womens pleasure companies and HIV/AIDS prevention are not allowed, while the platform allows ads for erectile dysfunction and condoms.

Faisal explains that; working with fashion brands like Fashion Nova whose contents are edgy, risque, and unique. You have to essentially learn how to game the gram and to adapt your content consistently.

To achieve Instagram domination you need access to relevant data. The past informs your future success. According to Shafique, It is very important to use analytics to see what content works and doesnt work and how your community is engaging with your posts over time. Sometimes, this is the only way you can learn about subtle algorithmic changes.

Creativity and the ability to make visually striking content are certainly at the top of the algorithms requirements. Other major traits include; consistency, publishing more video content, crafting captivating headlines and going live more often, and never ignoring Instagram stories.

For Stories, the algorithm works differently; creators stand a greater chance of having their stories viewed if they post consistently. The more views creators gain, the higher their ranking. Stories are meant to be binge-watched, so the chances are that if creators post regularly, they will get viewed. Stories are also shown to users based on location, which explains why location-based hashtags are now frequently used.

Many creators want to also appear frequently on the explore page. The Instagram algorithm works similarly with feeds and explore, but according to Instagram themselves, the most important actions we predict in Explore include likes, saves, and shares.

However, to come up in the Explore page, you need a creative use of hashtags and keywords since those are the two indices people now search with. Creators and influencers often need to rely on expert help to ensure that they do not become shadowbanned by using banned hashtags or banned keywords.

Over 50 plus-sized content creators recently signed up to participate in the Dont Delete My Body project, calling on Instagram to stop censoring fat bodies.According to Dr. Emil Kohan, a Los Angeles based plastic surgeon, the phenomenon of silencing plus sized voices also speaks to the problem of IGs tendency to promote and celebrate a specific type of body. This and the issue of filters has led to an increase in requests for plastic surgery among young women, says Dr. Kohan.

The rallying against these biases is becoming more frequent and more forceful. Although instagram has subtlyadmitted that its algorithm has some biasesand has vowed to evolve away from these biases, the company unlikely to change even in the face of mass criticism. So, we have to learn to walk the tightrope and advocate for change, while also supporting alternatives.

Originally posted here:

Achieving Instagram Growth In The Age Of AI And Algorithmic Bias - Forbes

A pistol is displayed above a pile of firearms after it was crushed at the start of a two=week gun amnesty in Nottingham in 2004

A quarter of a century on, has the ban on pistols or 'handguns' as they were popularly referred to in the tabloid press made Britain a safer place?

When then home secretary Michael Howard announced the measures on October 16, 1996, he achieved the distinction of upsetting people on both sides of the debate.

Gun clubs accused Mr Howard of an over-reaction that would put thousands of jobs at risk, while those calling for tighter regulation criticised him for making an exception for 0.22 calibre target pistols.

The ban was introduced in response to the massacre at Dunblane Primary School on March 13 that year, when former scoutmaster Thomas Hamilton walked into the gym and killed 16 young children and their teacher. He also injured 13 other children and three teachers. Hamilton then shot himself.

Within two days of the new laws being announced, Warren Hawksley MP told a West Midland audience that the bill would be futile.

"My final point is a word of warning to the general public and to the parents of Dunblane,'' he told Bridgnorth Supper Club on October 18. 1996.

"No-one wants another Dunblane but please do not sleep any happier in your beds after the bill has gone through Parliament.

"Hopes of no more atrocities, I fear, are groundless.''

Mr Hawksley, the late Tory MP for Halesowen & Stourbridge, and who previously represented The Wrekin, was a keen clay-pigeon shooter. He said it was targeting people who enjoyed a legitimate sport, while doing nothing to deal with the four million illegally held guns on the street.

Paul Leatherdale, 38, who represented Great Britain at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, said it ruined the sport.

Ross Armstrong, owner of Medway Shooting Club in Kent said: "People are killed by drunk drivers but no-one demands a ban on cars. Further restrictions suit no-one."

But the bill was also met with fierce criticism for allowing the small-bore pistols favoured by target shooters, albeit with restrictions that they could only be kept at gun clubs. This exception was quickly reversed when Tony Blair's Labour government took office the following May, and since then the UK Olympic team had to train in Northern Ireland which was not covered by the ban.

At the time the ban was announced, Labour's shadow home secretary Jack Straw accused the Government of being slow to act, arguing that the laws should have been brought in following the Hungerford massacre in 1987, when Michael Ryan shot 16 people dead in the sleepy Berkshire town.

While opponents of the ban may have had a point about the number of illegally held guns, it was also an inescapable fact that both Hamilton and Ryan committed their crime using legally held, fully licensed firearms.

The Countryside Alliance was quick to point out that criminal use of pistols increased by 40 per cent over the two years after the new laws were introduced.

Indeed, by 2001, gun crime had actually doubled, although Prof Peter Squires, a professor of criminology at Brighton University and campaigner for tighter gun laws, points out that was largely down to the way gun-crime was recorded at the time.

Before 2003, 'gun crime' figures included any incident where a victim reported that a gun was used, even if that gun was never fired, or was a replica. The Government responded by amending these laws, so the use of air weapons and pellet guns were placed under the auspices of the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003, which meant gun crime figures purely under their Firearms Act definition decreased markedly over the next 10 years.

The number of homicides by shooting is perhaps a more reliable measure, and this does appear to suggest that the laws have had some effect in making our streets safer. In 1995 there were 70 incidences of murder or manslaughter caused by shooting, but the figure rose to an all-time high of 96 in 2001/2002. After this time, the number of homicides fell steadily until June 2010, when taxi driver Derrick Bird shot 12 people dead and injured 11. Bird, who later turned the gun on himself, used a legally held rifle which was not subject to the ban. In 2010/11, 60 homicides were recorded, still lower than 1995, and in recent years the figure has stabilised at around 30 gun homicides a year. At 0.05

It is also worth bearing in mind that the same period has seen a sharp in the number of knife crimes. In 1995 there were just under 200 knife-related homicides, but the figure had risen to more than 280 by 2018. Has the banning of pistols led to an increase in knife-related incidents? Its impossible to know, but the death of Sir David Amess is a timely reminder that the tighter licensing of guns can only be part of the solution.

See the rest here:

How effective has the 25-year ban on pistols been since the Dunblane massacre? - expressandstar.com

Boris Johnson has been accused of failing to deliver on his promise to beef up football banning orders to include online racism in the wake of the abuse aimed at Englands footballers.

The Prime Minister pledged in July to extend powers to ban fans from attending football matches if they are found guilty of racially attacking players online, insisting there would be no ifs, no buts.

It came after Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho were subjected to a torrent of abuse when England lost the Euro2020 final on penalties.

Labour has demanded Mr Johnson make good on the commitment he made in the House of Commons, insisting it has been more than three months since he promised to take action.

In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the Prime Minister told MPs the Government was taking practical steps to ensure banning orders were changed, so that if a person is guilty of racist online abuse of footballers, they will not be going to the matchno ifs, no buts, no exemptions and no excuses.

The issue was raised again in September when Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries promised to write to her opposite number immediately on the topic, but Labour insists no letter has been received.

The party says that the failure to implement the change promised by the PM back in July has left football players exposed to countless racist attacks online.

Shadow Culture Secretary Jo Stevens said: After the appalling abuse of the England football team during the Euros, there was quite rightly outrage from across the political spectrum.

But its been more than three months since the Prime Minister backed Labours call to treat online abuse in the same way as racism directed at players from the terraces and extend football banning orders.

Labour is now calling on the Government to put forward measures so they can be voted through Parliament.

Mr Johnson is also under pressure to stick to another promise made in the Commons this week to make social media bosses criminally liable for the foul content hosted on their platforms.

The pledge went beyond the existing provisions set out in the draft Online Safety Bill, and comes after it emerged that Instagram does not view monkey emojis to be racist.

Self regulation has manifestly failed and criminal sanctions, we believe, are the best way to change the arrogant culture of the leadership of social media companies who believe they are above the law, Ms Stevens added.

Read more from the original source:

Boris Johnson accused of breaking pledge to beef up laws to protect footballers against online racism - iNews

Call of Duty: Warzone has been plagued by hackers and cheaters since its release, however theyve implemented the shadow ban system to solve this issue.

Despite Ravens best efforts, Call of Dutys online battle royale, Warzone, continues to be overrun by hackers and cheaters.

With a series of hacks seeing mischievous players crashing peoples games (especially streamers), the devs need to do something soon.

Enter shadow banning, the system thats devised purely to stop rule breaking players in their tracks. Heres everything you need to know about this type of punishment.

If youve been hit with a shadow ban, Raven have decided that your account is associated with some form of illegitimate activity.

Shadow bans are given to Warzone players who have been hacking or cheating. Their main purpose is to group all of the punished players in the one lobby so that theyre forced to play together instead of against unsuspecting others.

As you can imagine, this is an absolute nightmare of a lobby to play in, so while you dont want one of these bans on your own account, you can take some satisfaction from the fact that getting a shadow ban is hellish for cheaters.

While theres no obvious way to tell if youve been shadow banned, here are a few of the things you should look out for if youve noticed some changes in your account.

Normally accidental bans are lifted after 7 to 14 days, but if youre sick of getting thrown into the lions den you can dispute the matter with Activision using this link.

So thats everything you need to know about shadow bans in Call of Duty: Warzone.

If you want to be on top of all the latest news, ensure that youre following our dedicated CoD Twitter account!

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What is shadow banning in Warzone? How to find out if you ...

Suddenly you notice that none of your social media activity seems to be showing up at all. Its like you dont even exist on the site Weird!

Is it a bug? Every website suffers from them sometimes, and the interactive features can often be the first to go haywire. Server maintenance could also be the culprit.

But another possibility is that you might have been shadowbanned (previously called ghost banned).

Accounts that are shadowbanned are put into a kind of invisible mode. In other words, they become a shadow that no one can see.

In this post, well talk more about what exactly shadowbanning is, and how you can tell if it happened to you.

Shadowbanning is when your posts or activity dont show up on a site, but you havent received an official ban or notification.

Its a way to let spammers continue to spam without anyone else in the community (or outside of it) seeing what they do.

That way, other social media users dont suffer from spam because they cant see it. The spammer wont immediately start to look for ways to get around the ban, because they dont even realize theyve been banned.

Now, all of this might sound a little odd or shady. Since many websites and apps deny that they shadowban, theres no way to know for sure that its happened.

If you suspect a shadowban, a change in the websites search or newsfeed algorithm might actually be to blame. And since the algorithms are the property of social media companies, its not in their best interest to reveal everything about them publicly.

Regardless of whether youve been penalized deliberately or accidentally, the effect is still the same no one can see your posts.

Theres no way of getting a full list of sites that shadowban people, since the practice isnt entirely out in the open.

However, shadowbanninghas been reported beforeunder certain circumstances, on sites and apps likeFacebook, Instagram, andTikTok, among others.

Respondents to a survey called Posting Into the Voidreported four general types of shadowbans:

Heres how to tell if youve been shadowbanned on some popular social media sites:

Does Twitter actually shadowban people? Well, yes and no.

In a blog post, Twitter claimed that they dont deliberately make peoples content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, and they certainly dont shadowban based on political viewpoints or ideology.

However, they did say they rank tweets and search results to address bad-faith actors. Basically, if Twitter thinks youre a spammer or a troll, its algorithm will penalize your content.

Twitter lists these as some of the factors they use to tell if youre a bad-faith actor or not:

To avoid getting shadowbanned on Twitter, you should confirm your email address and upload a profile picture.

Dont spam people and dont be overly promotional. If youre trying to sell a product or service and are posting too much, other users might block your content, causing a shadowban on your account.

You should also try to avoid trolling, getting into online arguments, or being too confrontational in your posts and comments. This can lead people to mute or block you.

Theres no way to tell for sure if youve been shadowbanned on Twitter. However, you could try using the site Shadowban.eu, which claims to be able to detect a shadowban.

How frustrating is it to work hard atbuilding up an Instagram following, only to see that your posts suddenly arent showing up?

Like with Twitter, Instagrams CEO has publicly claimed thatshadowbanning is not a thing, but aswith Twitter, thats not entirely true.

While youpersonally might not be being shadowbanned, the algorithm could still be hiding your posts.

Instagrams algorithm is designed to remove certain content. Namely, the algorithmpenalizes content that Instagram considers inappropriate, even if the content doesnt go against the appsCommunity Guidelines.

Specifically, they mention sexually-suggestive content. According to their Community Guidelines, spammy content and content associated with illegal activity or violence is also a no-go.

Instagram prefers photos or videos that are appropriate for a diverse audience so less family-friendly content may be at risk of a shadowban.

Theres no surefire way to tell if youve been shadowbanned on Instagram, but there are sites that say they can test it. Triberris one option.

Shadowbanning onRedditis a bit different from shadowbanning on other social media sites. Up until 2015, Reddit openly shadowbanned users who broke the sites rules by hiding their posts.

Reddit then announcedthat the shadowbanning system had been replaced with an account suspension system. Basically,some Reddit staff thoughtthat the shadowban tool had been useful for dealing with bots, but that banning real human users without telling them what they did wrong was unfair.

However, the site appears to still occasionally be using shadowbans, with ther/ShadowBan subredditstill active.

According to theirofficial content policy, Reddit may enforce their rules by removal of privileges from, or adding restrictions to, accounts, and also by removal of content, among other methods.

Of course, to avoid getting shadowbanned on Reddit, youll need to follow their rules. But one tricky thing about that is that the rules on Reddit actually depend on the subreddit you are submitting to.

Youll want to read and comment a lot first before submitting your own links. Watch how people react to various types of submissions within a specific subreddit, and then act accordingly.

You can also check out thisunofficial guide on how to avoid being shadowbanned. Some key points:

To find out if youre shadowbanned on Reddit, make a post in the r/ShadowBan subreddit. A bot will respond to you, letting you know if youre shadowbanned.

Even if youre not, the bot will tell you which posts of yours have been removed recently (if any).

You could also use a third-party tool, likeAm I Shadowbanned?

TikTok is a popular social network for sharing short videos. Unfortunately, you can get shadowbanned there too (kind of).

While theres no official mention of the term shadowban in TikToks Community Guidelines, like other social media networks, TikTok uses algorithms to privilege certain content. If you get on the wrong side of the algorithm, fewer people might see the content you post.

To have more people see your content and avoid penalties, try to follow best practices for TikToks recommendation algorithm, and always follow the Community Guidelines.

Stay away from illegal material, violence, hate speech, spam, and other similar topics.

To check if youve been shadowbannedon TikTok, look at your pageviews and For You page statistics. You can also use a hashtag and see if your post shows up under that hashtag.

Facebook calls its content moderation policy remove, reduce, and inform.

Basically, content that violates Facebooks Community Standardswill be removed from the site, while other undesirable content (like misleading information) may be less visible on Facebook or have a warning label placed on it.

If Facebook is consistently reducing your content, that could be considered a type of shadowban.

The main thing you can do to trigger a shadowban on Facebook is to share links to fake or misleading information. Content on the site is checked by independent fact-checkingorganizations.

Facebook also penalizes links from websitesthat its algorithm considers clickbait. Low-authority websiteswithout a lot of inbound and outbound links that generate a lot of clicks on Facebook may be considered clickbait.

Facebook groups where a lot of misleading links and clickbait are frequently shared may be shadowbanned.

If youre worried your personal page, business page, or group might have been shadowbanned on Facebook, check for a change in engagement levels on your recent posts.

While people dont often think about getting shadowbanned on LinkedIn, its possible for your contents reach to be throttled there.

Like other social media sites, LinkedIn has Community Policiesthat all members need to follow to avoid problems.

Since LinkedIn is a professional site, its content policies are even stricter than other platforms. Not only should your content be safe, legal, and appropriate, it has to be professional as well.

Although LinkedIn is obviously a place for career growth and self-promotion, spamming people is still a no-go.

Youll need to respect others privacy and intellectual property. You should also avoid harassment or unwanted romantic advances towards other members.

If you violate LinkedIns policies, they may limit the visibility of certain content, or remove it entirely.

That said, the LinkedIn algorithm is pretty complicated. Even if your content is perfectly professional and high-quality, it might still not be getting the reach you want.

Engagement and relevanceare the top two factors to keep in mind when creating content for LinkedIn.

While its not exactly a social network, its definitely still a site where people go to learn and share content. Can you be shadowbanned from YouTube?

Well, YouTube shadowbanninghas been in the newsbecause of popular creator PewDiePie. According to his fans, the Swedish videogame YouTubers channel was penalized in YouTube search.

YouTubes official response was thatit doesnt shadowban channels, but that some videos might be flagged and need to be reviewed before they show up in search.

Inan interview with Polygon, they said they were currently working on fixing the issue.

Different social networks have their own opinions on what type of violations merit a shadowban. However, we can definitely see some general trends that are worth noting.

How to not get shadowbanned

Shadowbanning is when your posts or activity dont show up, but you havent received an official ban or notification.

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, and others.

Follow the sites terms of service, dont post spam or links that arent allowed, dont post illegal content, and always treat others with kindness.

This depends on each site. For some, its just a period of time you have to wait, while with others you have to ask customer service. Some users get permanently shadowbanned as well.

You may not have any idea you are being shadowbanned. At least not at first though over time, you may begin to suspect it.

What you should do to protect yourself is to be careful that what you post isnt against the terms and conditions of the site or app. Also, try to avoidspamming content, starting fights with and trolling other users, or posting things that might be considered inappropriate.

A shadowban can be frustrating, especially if you dont feel like you deserve one. Maybe you dont agree with the social media algorithm about what is or isnt inappropriate, or maybe you think you werehaving a constructive debatewhile the algorithm thinks you were being a troll.

However, hopefully the tips in this guide can help you avoid being shadowbanned in the future, so your content can get better engagement.

What other ways can help people know if theyve been shadowbanned? Let us know in the comments.

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What is Shadow Banning (and How to Fix It) - Neil Patel

The conservative majority on the Supreme Court was so eager to nullify Roe v. Wade, the 1973 precedent securing the right to abortion, that it didnt even wait for oral arguments.

Instead, in the middle of the night, five of the high courts conservatives issued a brief, unsigned order allowing a Texas law that bans abortion at six weeks. The law also gives private citizens the authority to sue anyone who knowingly aids or abets an abortion and rewards them with $10,000 if successful, essentially placing a bounty on anyone wishing to end a pregnancy, and anyone who might help them. Texas is now rewarding residents who snitch to the state on the most intimate details of other peoples lives.

Last night, the Court silently acquiesced in a States enactment of a law that flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. The Court should not be so content to ignore its constitutional obligations to protect not only the rights of women, but also the sanctity of its precedents and of the rule of law.

Also remarkable was that the Supreme Court acted through its shadow docket, the decisions the justices make regarding emergency appeals such as death-penalty cases. Under normal procedure, cases take time to work their way through the lower courts, and are received at the Supreme Court with extensive records, briefs, and oral arguments. Ideally, this allows the justices to ensure that their hugely consequential decisions are properly informed and made as carefully as possible, weighing all the relevant legal and constitutional issues. But there are some circumstances in which the Court needs to act quickly to prevent some imminent or irreversible harm. Theres nothing inherently sinister about that. The shadow docket, though, now resembles a venue where the conservative legal movement can get speedy service from its friends on the Court.

Mary Ziegler: The deviousness of Texass new abortion law

Over the past few years, the cases on the shadow docket have risen in significance, with the justices quietly making major changes to American law without the scrutiny or attention that comes with holding oral arguments or writing major opinions. Trump-administration attorneys found the Courts conservative majority delighted to allow many of their most controversial policies to go forward. Under President Joe Biden, by contrast, the conservative justices have acted rapidly to block administration decisions, or to force Trump-era policies to remain in place.

The term shadow is meant to evoke the understanding that what the Court is doing is not the way that decision making on an ordinary merits docket would happen, says Melissa Murray, a law professor at NYU who clerked for Sotomayor while she was a federal judge. I think its clear that it has become a shadowy way to effect substantive decisions in cases where the Court, in the light of day, would be more reluctant to move aggressively.

The shadow docket has been a tremendously successful venue for the right. Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin who has closely followed the shadow docket, counts at least 41 requests for emergency relief submitted to the Court from the Trump administration, compared with eight under the Obama and Bush administrations combined. And he counts only four occasions during the Trump administration on which the Court denied the governments request outright. That deference has not continued into the Biden administration.

During the Trump administration, it was on the shadow docket that basically all of Trumps controversial immigration policies affecting millions of people were allowed to go into effect, including the travel ban, Vladeck told me. During the Biden administration perhaps the biggest shadow-docket ruling so far was the ruling last week that froze and effectively killed the CDCs revised eviction moratorium.

Under Trump, the justices allowed policies such as the administrations travel ban targeted at mostly Muslim nations, its prohibition against trans people serving in the military, and its restrictions on asylum to go into effect. Under Biden, they have barred the administrations attempt to prevent evictions because of the coronavirus pandemic and accepted a lower-court ruling demanding that the White House reimpose the controversial Trump-era Remain in Mexico policy, which forced migrants into precarious conditions in dangerous Mexican border cities where thousands became victims of kidnappings, rapes and extortion, according to The Washington Post. The decision compels the Biden administration to renegotiate an agreement with a foreign country reached during a prior administration; deference to the presidents constitutional authority to set foreign policy, which the justices had memorably cited in Trump-era cases, was suddenly absent.

What is so troubling about this trend is its continuing acceleration, not in volume, but in quality, Vladeck said. The Court seems increasingly untroubled by deciding big questions that affect lots of people this way. Having a conservative-dominated tribunal determine such questions, however, is an ideal arrangement for a party that has not won a majority of the votes in a presidential election since Tobey Maguire was Spider-Man, and that sees the popular majorities that vote against it as composed of illegitimate semi-citizens who have no right to govern.

Adam Serwer: The Supreme Court is headed back to the 19th century

The shadow docket has begun to look less like a place for emergency cases than one where the Republican-appointed justices can implement their preferred policies without having to go through the tedious formalities of following legal procedure, developing arguments consistent with precedent, or withstanding public scrutiny. And so after initially allowing the Texas law banning abortion before most women know they are actually pregnant to go into effect, five conservative justices told Republican-controlled states they could disregard Roe while insisting that wasnt what they were doing at all.

Instead, the justices in the majority argued in their unsigned opinion that because the case presented complex and novel antecedent procedural questions, their hands were tied. This is ludicrously dishonest. If Texas passed a law granting $10,000 bounties to private citizens if they sued anyone who held or enabled an indoor church service during the pandemic, the Courts conservative wing would not feign confusion about whether the constitutional right to freedom of worship had been violated because of the supposed novelty of the scheme.

This ruling is less a description of a complex legal challenge than a road map. As Mary Ziegler writes, the Texas law was strategically designed to evade legal restrictions, and the majority read the script that was handed to it. Republican-run legislatures now know that they can pass such laws and the Supreme Court will pretend to be unable to block them.

Among the Republican appointees, only Chief Justice John Roberts had enough respect for the rights purported doctrines of judicial minimalism to vote to wait for the case to reach the high court through normal procedural channels. Ironically, though, the unsigned majority decision reflects a careful study of Robertss years of successfully managing the Courts reputation. The decision does not say Roe is hereby overruled, but it tells states exactly how they can effectively ban abortion if they want to. In that, it echoes Robertss own tendency to hide his preferred outcomes behind legal technicalities, the better to mime fidelity to constitutional principle.

Mary Ziegler: The abortion fight has never been about just Roe v. Wade

Although the Court denies the applicants request for emergency relief today, the Courts order is emphatic in making clear that it cannot be understood as sustaining the constitutionality of the law at issue, Roberts wrote in his dissent. But because five justices allowed the law to go into effectand by implication, laws in any other state that wishes to emulate TexasRoe has been neutralized. The only question is whether that decision is temporary, and whether the Court will eventually enact any restraints on the particular legal scheme Texas has pioneered.

I dont think those in the reproductive-rights community who are sounding the alarm that [the Court] really effectively overruled Roe in Texas are being hyperbolic, Murray told me yesterday, prior to the Courts written opinion. The fact that the Supreme Court of the United States allows a law that patently contradicts its own statements about the right to an abortion to go into effect is essentially the Court signaling that it does not care about this right and it does not think this right should exist.

Neutralizing Roe through normal channels would have taken time, and the Supreme Courts conservatives did not want to wait. Thanks to the shadow docket, they didnt have to. Five conservative justices invalidated the constitutional right to an abortion simply because they could, because they felt like it, and because they dont believe anyone can stop them.

Read more:

The Supreme Court Guts Roe by Shadow Docket - The Atlantic

What is shadowbanning?

When someone is shadowbanned, their posts on that platform are virtually invisible to everyone but themselves. Their presence on that platform is limited, and their voice effectively suppressed. If were being technical, the patents complete abstract reads:

Users of social networking system are provided with user interface elements permitting the user to post comments on pages within the social networking system. Pages may be provided for any non-user entity, including for example, pages for businesses, products, concepts, etc. Embodiments provided herein permit page moderators to ban certain content from being displayed on a page. For example, the social networking system may receive a list of proscribed content and block comments containing the proscribed content by reducing the distribution of those comments to other viewing users. However, the social networking system may display the blocked content to the commenting user such that the commenting user is not made aware that his or her comment was blocked, thereby providing fewer incentives to the commenting user to spam the page or attempt to circumvent the social networking system filters.

The primary message that their patent is sending is that Facebook reserves the right to moderate what content people see. Proscribed means prohibited or forbidden by law. So, if Facebook sees proscribed content, it may limit the visibility of such content. This content is displayed only to the sharing user, and in many cases, they wont be aware that theyve been shadowbanned. Facebook does this to prevent the user from spamming the page and finding loopholes in the filtering system.

The main purpose of shadowbanning is supposedly to keep feeds clean and social media users happy. Facebook does not want people spreading content that comes off as spammy, or worse, offensive.

Because Facebook does not inform you of this shadowban, you wont really know if youre experiencing it. You could go about your day, routinely posting and sharing content, and you could not notice anything wrong. However, the telltale symptom of a shadowban is a dip in engagements. Youll see that your posts or comments arent getting as many reactions or replies as they usually would. Whereas your posts would normally reach 1,000 interactions, you find that youre struggling to reach 50.

Another way to tell if youve been shadowbanned is to use another friends account to see if your posts show up on their feed. Shadowbans will typically hide these posts from other people, and youll have to visit the banned persons profile to view these posts.

Anyone. No matter who you are or how many friends and followers you have, you can receive the Facebook shadowban. Legit accounts following rules could be just as much at risk as a malicious account abusing the platform. Shadowbanning is still a work in progress, so you can expect to have some outliers here and there. Facebook apparently uses this to enhance the overall customer experience, so you shouldnt take it personally. In some cases, the platform may have committed a simple mistake in banning you even when youve done nothing wrong.

A shadowban can be detrimental for businesses relying on Facebook as their primary platform for conducting transactions. But for personal accounts, this may not be as severe. There are a few things you can do to remedy this situation.

If you suspect youve been shadowbanned by Facebook, there are some things you can do to smooth this problem over.

Here are some things you can practice to reduce your odds of receiving a Facebook shadowban:

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How to Tell If Your Content Is Being "Shadow Banned" on ...

Late Wednesday night, there was finally the first snippet of good news this year in the never-ending abortion wars.U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman temporarily blocked Texas' near-total ban on abortions.The injunction was in response to a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice against Texas.Attorney General Merrick Garland called the ban on all abortions two weeks after a missed period which are 9out of 10 cases "clearly unconstitutional."

Signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in May, Texas' abortion bansets up a bounty hunter systemthatallowsany random stranger to claim sovereignty over a woman's body and sue anyone who helped her abort a pregnancy. In his 113-page decision a searing and angrybreath of fresh air for those Americans who believe women are people Judge Pitmancalled the law an "unprecedented and aggressive scheme to deprive its citizens of a significant and well-established constitutional right."

Thisdecision wasn't just a rebuke to the misogynist Texas legislators who passed this law, but to the Supreme Court that upheld it.

Without hearing arguments, the highest court in the nation allowed Texas' ban to go into effect through an unsigned "shadow docket"decision short enough to be written on a postcard. So Pitman put in the work that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court wouldn't do. He listened to arguments, he examined the evidence, and he wrote a decision painstakingly explaining his reasoning. It turns out that banning abortion through the back door is not as easy as Republicans and the partisan hacks they installed on the Supreme Court thought it would be.

And yes, conservatives clearly thought they could quietly overturn Roe v. Wade without the public noticing.

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The entire Texas abortion ban was built on a cloak-and-daggers strategy. The law itself was an effort to get around the problem of the news coverage that flows from clinics and reproductive rights suing the state for passing abortion bans. The "shadow docket" move was more of the same, allowing the Supreme Court to overturn Roe without coming right out and saying that's what they did. As soon as the non-decision decision came down, the conservative propagandists fanned out, insisting that the Supreme Court ruling wasn't really a Roe overturnbut merely a "procedural ruling" that causes "no harm."

But as Pitman's decision demonstrates, that's a flat-out lie.

His ruling cites numerous examples of harm that the Supreme Court ignored in issuing its paragraph-length decision, including to "a Texas minor who had been raped by a family member" and had to drive eight hours for care, and "another woman from Texas who had been raped" and struggled "to take extra time off from work to make the trip to Oklahoma, as well as find childcare for her children."

In one sense, this nonsense about how this is merely a "procedural" decision as if people weren't going to noticethat 90% of abortions were banned in Texas worked. Every time I tune into a cable news show discussion about abortion and the courts, the discussion is over "if" the Supreme Court will overturn Roe in the "future," with little acknowledgment that they already did it through the back door. While the Supreme Court is hearing a more formal case in December Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health that will allow them to legalize abortion bans nationwide,the damage has already been done. And let's face it, even when they do issue a more extensive ruling, they're going to be deceptive about itand try to find some legal reasoning that allows abortion to be banned without coming right out and saying they're overturning Roe.

The reason conservatives want so much camouflage for their Roe overturn is not mysterious.Abortion rights are very popular, and there's a real chance thiscould hurt Republicans electorally. Sexism and still-lingering American puritanism may cause all sorts of chaos in polling people's moral judgments on abortion, but when people are asked point-blank about the right to get one, around three-quarterswant it to stay put. Even 40% of people who call themselves "pro-life" want the right to abortion, because even they know, on some level, that being against abortion is easy until you need one.

So really, it should be no surprise that approvalof the Supreme Court has plummeted to a new low of 40%, down from 58% a mere year ago. Even more detailed polling shows that skepticism of the court has dramatically increased, with more Americans agreeing that Congress should do something to reinthe court in or abolish it altogether.Somehow, however, conservatives seem to be shocked that their efforts to ban abortion under the cover of darkness have not gone unnoticed.

The conservative justices behind the shadow docket abortion ban, for instance, have becomeincredibly whiny in the face of all the completely earned accusations that they are sleazy fundamentalists who are too cowardly to own their rejection of law and custom in their frenzied efforts to turn the U.S. into Gilead. In the past month alone, Amy Coney Barrett gave a protest-too-much speech denying she and other conservative justices are "partisan hacks," Samuel Alito blamed the media and not his own actions for people disliking him, and Clarence Thomas accused peopleof wanting to destroy "our institutions because they don't give us what we want, when we want it," seemingly talking to a bunch of toddlers wanting candy, rather than citizens demanding basic human rights.

Even the Texas anti-choice activists behind this ban seem to be caught flat-footed. As Jill Filipovic writes in the Atlantic, "abortion opponents are claiming to be surprised that the law is being used as writtenand are perhaps realizing, belatedly, that their vigilante strategy comes with more than a few perils."

It appears that the people behind this law thought the mere threat of a lawsuit would cause abortion providers to shut down and that actual enforcement which would end up pitting the kind of repugnant people who would be abortion bounty hunters against sympathetic figures like doctors wouldn't be necessary. At first, that seemed likely, as clinics across the state shut down services and sent patients out of state for help. But then a San Antonio-based physician, Dr. Alan Braid, performed an abortion and wrote a Washington Post op-ed about it, daring anti-choicers to sue him. And sure enough, the situation turned into a circus, with two disbarred attorneys from out of state neither of whom actually oppose abortion rights suing Dr. Braid.

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John Seago, an anti-choice activist who helped pass this law, clearly recognizes the optics are bad here, whining to the New York Timesthat the lawsuits aren't "valid attempts to save innocent human lives" and instead are "self-serving legal stunts."

But here's the thing: There is no other way this law could be enforced but through repulsivepeoplefiling lawsuits. Despite all the self-flatteryabout being "pro-life," anti-choice activists are clearly motivated by misogyny, and don't care about "life."That's been demonstrated in a million ways, most recently in the embrace of anti-vaccine/pro-COVID-19 policies by Republicans. So anyone who would sue, declaring sovereignty over a woman's body and announcing his right to force childbirth on her, is going to be an unpleasant character. Seago knows this, I'm sure. He certainly sees the people who protest abortion clinics and how they don't generally do the best job of concealing how much hate and sexual resentment fuels their politics.

In a certain light, it makes a rough sense that conservatives thought they could get away with banning abortion through subterfuge. Americans have a long history of discomfort with the topic, and with talking about sex generally. Pro-choice activists are mostly women, making it easy for the right, in the past, to convincemost Americans that threats to abortion rights are being overblown by hysterical feminists. And while abortion is common in one sense 18% of pregnancies end in abortion, about 1 in 4 women will have one at some point it'snot something most people deal with on a daily basis. It's why the anti-choice movement has been so successful at gradually making abortion much harder to get without most people noticing. It's just not something most people think about until they or a loved one needs access.

But what conservatives are swiftly learning is Americans aren't the prudes and sexist they thought we were. Attitudes about sex are rapidly liberalizing. For instance, 73% of Americans are fine with sex outside of marriage now, up from 53% twenty years ago. (And those who disapprove are hypocrites, as 95% of Americans reported having had premarital sex in 2006, a number that's surely gone up since then.) And a majority of Americans agree that women have a long way to go to achieve equality, which is a good stand-in measure for whether or not people think sexism is wrong.

In light of these changes, it's not a surprise that people are both outraged about the Texas abortion ban and unafraid to say so publicly. The fight to end abortion rights is, politically at least, going to be much harder than Republicans were clearly betting it would be.

Continue reading here:

Republicans thought the Supreme Court could stealthily ban abortion. They were wrong - Salon