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Comment by vivegi | Hacker News Reader

This seems to be a shadowban by possibly overzealous/incompetent ISPs.

I am in India and able to access and download VLC through my ISP from the official videolan website.

It is very likely the case would get thrown out as the party to which the notice is served (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) might just submit an affidavit / explanation to the court that no ban has been issued. That would leave videolan with the option of pursuing the ISPs and then it becomes murky. They should probably also add the ISPs (at least the big ones) that are blocking the website as additional defendants so they can issue sworn affidavits on whether there is a shadowban in place.

I absolutely don't get why videolan needs to be blocked. I hope they get the blockage lifted.

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> This seems to be a shadowban by possibly overzealous/incompetent ISPs.

I suspect we won't get many people joining this discussion to say that private companies are allowed to do whatever they want, and it's not censorship because they're not the government, and if you don't like your ISP shadowbanning websites then you can just change ISP.

It is a little more complicated than that. A large percentage of people in India access the Internet from their mobile phones and are likely to be using the data plan of their mobile carrier. So, they do not have that luxury.

Then they should just start their own mobile carrier. /s

As easy as 1-2-3, right?

You’re attempting to overdramatize by appropriating the term ‘shadowban’. It does not mean what you pretend it to mean and it doesn’t help you make your case, it just makes you look like you’re overselling.

What term would you use instead of shadowban when one or more entities are blocking a person (or in this case a company) and access to their website without revealing why the block was in place in a transparent manner?

The aggrieved party has filed a Right to Information petition with the Indian government agency (equivalent to a Freedom of Information Act request under US law).

I think the term is appropriate esp. since some ISPs are not blocking it.

"Ban." The shadow in shadowban refers to the fact of the ban itself being hidden, whereas in this case the block is plainly visible to anyone affected.

I'd argue that shadowban is visible to everyone but the banned, which is the case here (as in VLC not being notified).

They can deduce that through the reduced download counts, but so can the shadowbanned users here through the vote counts.

We've never said that Google is "shadowbanned" in China before, nor any other site filtered by the great firewall.

There is an article that specifically says that VLC wasn't informed of the decision. Underlining this by saying shadowbanned wouldn't be overselling it, right?

Nobody ever notifies the target if they block them. Do you think Google sends you an email if they put your server on their gmail blacklist? It’s just that, a block.

The trend where some government action causes third parties to voluntarily block things even if it’s not directly required is called a ‘chilling effect’:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect

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