To: ted cruz, bernie sanders
Outlaw shadow banning
The well-known practice of shadow-banning (artificially preventing other users from seeing a person's social media communications without the latter's knowledge) is unethical and can be used as an endaround speech freedoms. The EU has already outlawed it (https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/06/1069391/safer-internet-dsa-dma-eu/), which means they're now protecting some speech freedoms more than we are. It's wrong for multiple reasons:
- It's censorship that does not align with the first amendment
- It's misleading/fraudulent. Users are led to believe the time they're spending using an application or service has a completely different effect or outcome than is the case.
- It wastes shadow-banned users' time. There are millions of hours lost per year by shadow-banned users taking the time to interact with social media platforms without knowing their interaction is an illusion.
What needs to happen:
1. This practice needs to be outlawed. Corporations are exploiting and misleading users who believe the product is doing something it's not.
2. Force platforms to share statistics about how many user accounts they've shadow-banned. The public deserves to know the magnitude of this injustice.
- It's censorship that does not align with the first amendment
- It's misleading/fraudulent. Users are led to believe the time they're spending using an application or service has a completely different effect or outcome than is the case.
- It wastes shadow-banned users' time. There are millions of hours lost per year by shadow-banned users taking the time to interact with social media platforms without knowing their interaction is an illusion.
What needs to happen:
1. This practice needs to be outlawed. Corporations are exploiting and misleading users who believe the product is doing something it's not.
2. Force platforms to share statistics about how many user accounts they've shadow-banned. The public deserves to know the magnitude of this injustice.
Why is this important?
The well-known practice of shadow-banning (artificially preventing other users from seeing a person's social media communications without the latter's knowledge) is unethical and can be used as an endaround speech freedoms. The EU has already outlawed it (https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/06/1069391/safer-internet-dsa-dma-eu/), which means they're now protecting some speech freedoms more than we are. It's wrong for multiple reasons:
- It's censorship that does not align with the first amendment
- It's misleading/fraudulent. Users are led to believe the time they're spending using an application or service has a completely different effect or outcome than is the case.
- It wastes shadow-banned users' time. There are millions of hours lost per year by shadow-banned users taking the time to interact with social media platforms without knowing their interaction is an illusion.
What needs to happen:
1. This practice needs to be outlawed. Corporations are exploiting and misleading users who believe the product is doing something it's not.
2. Force platforms to share statistics about how many user accounts they've shadow-banned. The public deserves to know the magnitude of this injustice.
- It's censorship that does not align with the first amendment
- It's misleading/fraudulent. Users are led to believe the time they're spending using an application or service has a completely different effect or outcome than is the case.
- It wastes shadow-banned users' time. There are millions of hours lost per year by shadow-banned users taking the time to interact with social media platforms without knowing their interaction is an illusion.
What needs to happen:
1. This practice needs to be outlawed. Corporations are exploiting and misleading users who believe the product is doing something it's not.
2. Force platforms to share statistics about how many user accounts they've shadow-banned. The public deserves to know the magnitude of this injustice.