Perhaps it’s an issue with the definition of “shadowban”, but I understood it to mean “you tweet, but no one sees”. Letting a user know that their account is in this state for this_reason actually seems like an improvement to me, not an oxymoron.
The point of shadowbans/hellbans as they exist on say, reddit, is to deal with what would be termed criminally as a fixated person. If they know they're banned, they just make a new account, and another one after that, and another one - if they think they can't post they engage in ever more extreme measures to keep doing it.
A hellban is a solution here, or at least a relief valve because of course this person doesn't actually engage with the community or care to, they're their to grief it: so letting them continue to think they're posting normally while being invisible keeps them occupied until either they lose interest or somehow figure it out.
Moderators are a finite resource, and spending all their resources chasing down someone who won't take the hint is exactly what a hellban is for.
Why? Isn't this a signal to the broader population that certain behaviors result in this kind of downranking?
>Moderators are a finite resource, and spending all their resources chasing down someone who won't take the hint is exactly what a hellban is for.
Again, it's it useful to signal that accounts that violate the rules (or are right up at the edge of violating them) are in this state?
You didn't actually address the OPs claims and the reason why shadowbanning exists. Sometimes you get people that are literal stalkers, harassers. People that chase out other individuals. The problem is when you ban them you give them a clear signal that they are unable to post. So what do they do? They create a new account. Then they repeat the process.
Not informing them that they violated the rules is the entire point. The broader population already knows that these behaviors are bad. The problem is dealing with specific users that refuse to give up and refuse to go away. To them their account has zero value; a ban means nothing to them. Their value is based on dealing damage to other users of your community.
> Shadow banning, also called stealth banning, hellbanning, ghost banning or comment ghosting, is the practice of blocking or partially blocking a user or the user's content from some areas of an online community in such a way that the ban is not readily apparent to the user