<story><title>Facebook has been granted patent on shadow banning</title><url>http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;d=PALL&amp;p=1&amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&amp;r=1&amp;f=G&amp;l=50&amp;s1=10,356,024.PN.&amp;OS=PN/10,356,024&amp;RS=PN/10,356,024</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jedberg</author><text>This is ridiculous.  We had shadow banning on reddit in 2007, four years before this was ever filed.  In fact, we met with Facebook and told them about it before 2011, and they hadn&amp;#x27;t considered it before that.  I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure reddit is where they got the idea...&lt;p&gt;To be fair, there was no public record of it until 2012 or so.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Figs</author><text>&amp;gt; To be fair, there was no public record of it until 2012 or so&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure if reddit &lt;i&gt;publicly acknowledged it&lt;/i&gt; before then, but it was certainly &lt;i&gt;known&lt;/i&gt; that you were doing it. (It was also pretty damned obvious that you guys were fucking with vote counts -- e.g. &amp;quot;66% like it&amp;quot; on every post -- among other questionable anti-spam tactics...)&lt;p&gt;The earliest record I can find of the idea being discussed on reddit -- there might be earlier ones, this was just the earliest I&amp;#x27;ve been able to dig up so far -- was in a suggestion by user ltbarcly back in June 2007:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; A better idea is a silent ban. Let him post comments, and show him those comments, but just leave them out for everyone else.&lt;p&gt;Source, as preserved by archive.org: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20070604141333&amp;#x2F;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;reddit.com&amp;#x2F;info&amp;#x2F;1vcyp&amp;#x2F;comments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20070604141333&amp;#x2F;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;reddit.com...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are also blog posts complaining about it from well before 2012 -- e.g. here&amp;#x27;s one from 2010: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.stochasticgeometry.ie&amp;#x2F;2010&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;silently-banned-reddit&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.stochasticgeometry.ie&amp;#x2F;2010&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;silently-banned-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The comments on it even use the term &amp;quot;shadowbanned&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook has been granted patent on shadow banning</title><url>http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;d=PALL&amp;p=1&amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&amp;r=1&amp;f=G&amp;l=50&amp;s1=10,356,024.PN.&amp;OS=PN/10,356,024&amp;RS=PN/10,356,024</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jedberg</author><text>This is ridiculous.  We had shadow banning on reddit in 2007, four years before this was ever filed.  In fact, we met with Facebook and told them about it before 2011, and they hadn&amp;#x27;t considered it before that.  I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure reddit is where they got the idea...&lt;p&gt;To be fair, there was no public record of it until 2012 or so.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Meekro</author><text>vBulletin (a forum package like phpBB, but not open source and you had to pay for it) had a shadowban feature they called &amp;quot;Tachy Goes to Coventry&amp;quot; and there are references to it as far back as 2003.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;forum.vbulletin.com&amp;#x2F;forum&amp;#x2F;general&amp;#x2F;chit-chat&amp;#x2F;75468-tachy-goes-to-coventry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;forum.vbulletin.com&amp;#x2F;forum&amp;#x2F;general&amp;#x2F;chit-chat&amp;#x2F;75468-ta...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>