“Shadow banning” is likely a term you have heard or used online without really knowing much about it. As the name suggests, shadow banning thrives outside of the light of public knowledge and institutional acknowledgment. The term is more often named by social media users rather than the social media companies, who tend to underplay its algorithmic role or completely deny its existence altogether. After social media creators noticed decreased engagement on their more risqué posts, users began speculating whether the sites themselves had something to do with the trend. Thus, shadow ban was coined. Shadow banning refers to social media posts or accounts being hidden from the Explore (or similar) pages, posts or accounts being more difficult to search for, and posts or accounts being indicative of more critical moderation, which might later result in post removal or account blocking. But, because institutions refuse to validate these trends, much of the knowledge on shadow banning surrounds user perception, qualitative study, and the sites’ “vaguely inappropriate content” policies. As this particular content does not outright go against the Community Guidelines, it cannot be removed at this point. In further exploration of social media censorship policies, SHA would like to elaborate on this concept to provide some clarification on if or when shadow banning occurs, who it tends to affect, and some of the social, economic, and advocacy implications.
While many social media platforms use tactics to hide the potentiality of shadow banning being brought to light, there is evidence to suggest that these are merely thinly-veiled excuses to take action against oppressive censorship practices. For instance, one study found Twitter’s usual claim of “bugs” to be statistically unlikely and indicative of a larger platform's way of functioning. But the institutional denial goes even deeper. Instagram has been known to invoke “black box gaslighting” in order to maintain power and subjective rulings over what may or may not deserve audience engagement. Black box gaslighting is literally used to undermine user confidence in their ability to know and curb algorithmic harm. Additionally, the individual user cannot effectively argue their case when shadow banned because they receive no notice of this shadow banning. Therefore, Instagram uses shadow banning as a form of secret censorship that hides whatever is deemed borderline content (i.e., women’s bodies, nudity, sexuality, trans bodies, BIPOC individuals).
Obviously, there are several issues with this type of policy implementation. Most importantly, secret censorship seems to go against good governance values. While social media companies are privatized, in typical capitalist economies, transparency would still be prioritized because of consumer demand or government regulation. In the digital space, though, these lines are blurred and more easily hidden through the above-mentioned tactics. Furthermore, as has been the topic of conversation since the pandemic’s outbreak and subsequent vaccine arrival, social media has a unique and powerful ability to stifle individual freedom. In connection with shadow banning, the freedom to post as one pleases is hindered on an institutional level. In this way, the social media platforms show a preference for protecting their institutional freedom, rather than the freedom of the users to which they owe their success. Finally, these particular policies are inconsistent and unable to be controlled for. Whether leaving content review up to algorithms or individuals, internal biases will be in place that will target certain groups more than others and will not allow for even enforcement of the policy.
This subtle attack on marginalized communities particularly affected the sex work community after the passing of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act/Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act in 2018. Following this legislation, sex workers, pole dancers, sexuality advocates, and sexual educators reported having their posts demoted by social media platforms. Dismissal such as this further marginalizes and stigmatizes the community as well as holds back sex-positive progress from having a more forefront position in public discourse. This is not to mention the fact that celebrities regularly post borderline “suggestive” content, which is then promoted by sites. Celebrities are actually offered more and specialized protection by sites in repayment for their audience traction, clearly demonstrating the hierarchy at play here. Moreover, gendered and racial minorities self-report experiencing shadow banning at larger rates than white, cis-gendered populations. For example, Hispanic individuals report having been shadow banned more often than others, while data supports Black users being more harshly moderated (e.g., entire accounts being blocked instead of certain posts being removed) than others. This highlights how social stereotypes are remade and solidified in digital culture for a new generation.
The effects of this secret censorship are widespread, and a myriad of emotions surrounding these policies exist and are valid. Overall, the targeting and stigma of shadow banning hold the most real-life implications. By hiding marginalized users, diverse voices are excluded from necessary conversations, and niche communities are harder to access. In some cases, a user can be shadow banned because of relation to another shadow banned user. This creates a culture of distrust within online communities as individual users struggle to make connections while protecting themselves. When taken to the extreme, conspiracy theories on censorship and Big Tech can spread because of secret shadow banning policies, particularly among Republican survey respondents.
More specifically, controversy surrounds the possible economic and social independence that can stem from content creation online. OnlyFans, a website where users can sell and solicit pornography, has undergone major policy upheaval since it banned sexually explicit content last year. As an extension of the gig economy, flourishing since COVID-19, sex workers could make a profit from their homes. Though, it is important to note that gig economies, even digital, are unstable and can cause major financial stress during less lucrative months. This is especially true when reflecting on the nature of online sales success requiring some advanced marketing and technological skills, which sex workers are more unlikely to have. Either way, the platform on which sex workers could attain some sort of economic independence has now had its potential drastically reduced through moderation. In fact, studies suggest that shadow banning causes financial harm to users across all platforms due to decreased engagement and “clicks.” Another consideration is the unpaid and emotional labor that sex workers perform in cultivating their OnlyFans fan-base; though some argue that these types of labor are mitigated through the creator’s distinctive ability to set boundaries and barriers in an online space. Further, shadow banning policies have social associations that can make safety an issue. While some argue that OnlyFans’ written policies serve to protect creators from unsafe conditions at the hands of their customers, liberal and radical feminism theories assert that the OnlyFans platform itself has significant safety concerns that can harm creators. Thus, fans are not the most prominent concern of creators as they fight against oppressive censorship on the site they use to attract customers. This is then complicated further by the inherent complexity of offering or responding to sex-based requests dependent on one’s socioeconomic status and societal positionality.
On other platforms, creators have ventured to subvert shadow banning through creative identity branding. Trans “porntropreneurs” use Twitter and Instagram to highlight their art and offer specific services that meet their online brand, which is needed to circumvent shadow banning policies. However, this branding can go so far as to cause real-life isolation and alienation. Additionally, since the popularization of the term “shadow ban,” Instagram has seen a surge of feminist sex-positive art that poses women’s bodies less as objects, and more as the subjects of the frame. To do this, artists have used typical strategies which surround making the female body visible while desexualizing it, diversifying feminine desire in opposition to the male gaze, and centering female pleasure.
This individual resistance to institutional failures to provide societal needs lays the groundwork for further advocacy for identifying and deconstructing suppressive policies. By using similar tactics, including subversive pushback, self-censorship, and simply spreading awareness aided by individual data collection of decreased engagement, social media users can refuse to fall victim to Big Tech’s gaslighting. Additionally, pushing for social media websites to acknowledge and name shadow banning would allow for the culture to fully recognize the problem in their beginning attempts to reconcile it. In this case, words are extremely important to the lived realities of underserved communities. On the larger scale, seeing as though these social media companies were quick to change their policies following legislation, advocacy for the legalization and legitimation of sex work should be prioritized in uplifting this community out of the shadows.
By Emily Carriere