Is Shadow Banning Real? Unfair? Or Needed Control? EP11

Episode 11 Transcript

Welcome back to the Marketing Combat Podcast. My name is Chris Kubbernus. With me is the best ginger on the planet. Heck yeah, Jason Donnelly. Yeah, hello. First off, that's our word. So please refrain from calling me a ginger. Second, thank you for the introduction. This is the Marketing Combat Podcast. Today we're gonna be talking about social media shadow bans. If it's an unfair suppression tactic or if it's needed control.

The best part about this is every single time that we do these little battles, we know what the subject matter's gonna be, but we don't know what our argument or which way we're gonna fight it, or if we're gonna fight for something that we actually want or not. So, social media shadow bands, I don't think they exist. I don't think shadow bands are real. So I am gonna go for...

that they are unfair suppression. I don't think anybody should be banned on any platform whatsoever. And I think that the people should be in charge of banning, blocking, stopping, interacting with something they don't want. I don't think it's a platform's job to block anybody, shadow ban, stop, suppress. I think it's the people's opportunity. It's free speech. We've had this talk before. It's all about free speech for me. I think free speech should be open and out there and whatever. And yes,

There's a lot of horrible people in the world. Don't follow them. Block them. Don't interact with them. Don't be a part of that world. But horrible people are horrible people and there will always be horrible people. It's not Facebook's job to tell me that I can't follow these horrible people, although I'm never going to. But it's your job, dear listener or viewer, to block them. But it's not, I don't think shadow banning's real. I think it's just your job to do.

what you need to do to not follow those people. Chris, I actually think that shadow banning is necessary and it's not just about blocking bad people. think like what the platforms need to do is they need to suppress reach. They need to shadow ban people in order to make sure that the commodification of posts don't exist. Doesn't happen, right? So they need to continue to raise the ante.

up the ante, make it harder for you to reach your audiences because essentially like the platform, they're about paying for reach. mean, they need to. Yeah, that's the truth. mean, like platforms, their existence is to get advertisers to pay for reach. That's what they, I mean, that's their whole reason for existing. And if they just let everything go, if they just like, everyone could reach everything, you know, you're not going to get shadow banned. You're not going to get suppressed a bit. Then people don't have a incentive to try harder.

to make the content better, to keep users coming back, and therefore all the level of content will just keep going lower and lower and lower, and it won't actually be exciting. Like the whole platform will die. So shadow banning is necessary to make sure that people continue putting out great content, coming back to the platform, interacting with their audiences, trying to figure out, trying to search the internet, what am I doing wrong, how do do this, what do I do here, like hey.

Have you guys been shadow banned? It's a necessary tool to help everybody that's posting to keep leveling up. And it's good for the platform to suppress certain content because they need to open space. mean, there's only so much scrolling you can do in the world. There's only so much content that you can consume per day. And if they just let everything flood in, there won't be space for advertisers. And then that space, then they won't be able to sell anything and they won't be able to exist as a platform. So it's a necessary tool in order for the platform to exist.

Got it. So, Chris, you support the platform and advertising and I support the people. If I'm hearing this correctly, okay. No platform, no people though. I mean, like if the platform dies because they can't afford it because there's no money coming in, there's no advertisers, then the people won't post anywhere. They'll have to be finding a new one. And the same thing will happen. Same thing will happen. There'll be no structure. There'll be no business to do it. Therefore, then it becomes like a public forum that just exists for free. And...

That also can't, they can't also exist, right? Because then you have no incentive to make the product better. You have no incentive to make something. I mean, that's why, that's why roads suck. That's why, you know, the public library isn't that great. That's why like anywhere where it's like public funding is needed to sustain the entire thing, that's where things get a little bit nasty. So that's where I think like we need them. We need the platforms to continue to make the content.

harder to reach the audiences that people have built. Therefore, they can increase advertising spend, increase get more money in, and they can support the development and innovation platform. You heard it here first. I'm all for the people. I'm all for the spreading of information and the things that you love. And Chris is all about making money. What do you guys think? Everybody who's listening to this, watching this, do you think that shadow banning is real, eh? And do you think it's a necessary evil? I need to know because I think that everybody should have a voice and get your stuff out there.

Tell us in the comments what you think. This is just a debate, folks. So yeah, let us know in the comments what do you think. And I know this is a podcast, so if you're listening, you can't comment. But if you're on the video side of things, you can. So come say hi to us. All right. We promise not to shadow ban your comment on our. I actually will shadow ban their comment. Yeah. Actually, we can do that. That's interesting, right? Like the delete but or like hide from other people option on content is kind of funny, right? Because it's like.

You've been shadowbammed, but you don't even know it. It's a good power. I like shadowbanning people. We'll see you tomorrow. See you tomorrow. That's weird. That is weird. See you.