Post by leafo in How do i delete my account now that my favorite creators have been shadow banned?

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Can you please link to cases of “that many swf creators were hit to.” Unfortunately there’s been a lot of misinformation regarding our NSFW content audit and how indexing on itch.io works in general. We’ve been reaching out to any developers who are making these claims to help clean up any confusion https://itch.io/docs/creators/getting-indexed

Also, sorry to argue semantics, but we would not consider what we did “shadow banning”. We deindexed content from our search and browse pages, but the pages were left fully functional through all other parts of the site, and could be accessed normally by their URL, from profile pages, collections, follow feeds, etc. Shadow banning is a specific technique where an account is banned from a platform, but the account owner is tricked into thinking others can see their content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning

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DerketoGames148 days ago

Thanks for clarifying what a shadow ban is, I'm not an english speaker and oftern I don't understand new words, also I've read that games that won't accept payments are indexed again, well my account was de-indexed a few years ago, on the mastercard/payonner ban on adult content, since then my active projects are set to 'no payments', then my question is: how I can make my content indexed again?

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A Fals Fiction143 days ago (1 edit)

The link Leafo posted confirms we have been using the term correctly. Shadow banning “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, regardless of whether the action is taken by an individual or an algorithm.” That Wikipedia page was last updated two months ago.

Itch.io’s team might not want to admit it, but what is happening on this site is shadow banning. It wouldn’t have been if we were told beforehand that our works would be hidden from search results or if we had been individually notified about it.

(I’m still trying to guess if my unindexed pixel art tiles might have been moderated as suspicious or obnoxious. They certainly aren’t “adult NSFW” by the definitions used in Itch.io documentation.)

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redonihunter143 days ago

It does not. You even quoted the relevant part.

in such a way that the ban is not readily apparent to the user

The games disappeared from browse for everyone. If the affected accounts could have still seen their own games in browse & search, that would have been a shadow ban.

The qualifier shadow has no information value, if a game gets "banned" for everyone in search & browse.

Your things are newish, except the one thing that is indexed. Read here https://itch.io/t/4120453/game-quarantined-search-or-indexing-problem-read-this Items not being listed for weeks and months is not a new thing. And due to recent events, I would expect a certain additional waiting time

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A Fals Fiction142 days ago (1 edit)

Many creators do not regularly search for their own projects.

We do those searches when we expect problems. Like me— wondering why the official documentation says over and over again that indexing takes days when these forums were showing that it can take weeks, months, to never without communication about a restriction— was checking on my own projects and those of creators on similar themes.

That’s why so many creators were surprised when word of the delisting spread on social media from those of us who first noticed. They weren’t expecting their projects to not be indexed, because they believed they followed the rules.

Leafo is acting like there’s communication going both ways between itch.io staff and the targeted accounts, but it’s almost entirely creators asking what’s going on to no response or taking “few days” and the “no payment” indexing suggestion at face value.

There’s not even a simple banner announcing that roughly half (my estimates from this morning on the numbers I could dig up) of the projects are currently hidden from title searches and tag results or that there’s been a bunch of deletions. People know about this only by learning it offsite from tech news, anti-censorshio blogs, or affected creators.

That isn’t the worst form but it is what shadow banning looks like.

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redonihunter142 days ago

Communication is not good, that's a given.

But shadow ban is still the wrong term.

It would only be a shadow ban, if the publisher would be shown the game, while the rest of the people would not. If everyone is not seeing the game, that is a regular "ban". Delisted (and not yet listed) games are delisted for everyone, including the publisher of the game.

And yes, the faq is wrong for years now. I complained about this lots of times. Exchange days with weeks wherever such time frames are listed in the faq and it gets more accurate. My main complain is, that this creates expectations that will cause even more support requests, swamping support down even more. While a realistic estimate in the faq might put a lot of people at ease and not prompt them to swamp down support with a request after not being indexed for two days.

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