Shadow Banned on Ebay now? Really!? Selling Rare Music Shouldn't Be This Difficult!
Well, this isn't a 100% case of 'shadowbanning', but it sure did feel similar..
My dad has been putting adverts on Ebay to sell some of his rare vinyl music discs for over a decade and has aimed to put sound samples up of the music so that buyers know what they are getting. In some cases, the recordings literally don't exist anywhere else online, so people have no way of knowing what the music is without samples. He opted to use Dropbox as a file host and just add links into the advert to direct people to the music player in dropbox - it seemed to work fine... However...
He noticed a few days ago that he couldn't open the link to Dropbox in the adverts and after some investigation I discovered:
- The links DO open when he views the advert when logged in OR when viewing the adverts on a device he has previously logged in to ebay with - even if he views the adverts when logged out.
- If the adverts are viewed by other devices (tested from other locations) - the links to dropbox are inactivated.
This is very similar to the way that Youtube 'sandboxes' (effectively shadowbans) links put into youtube comments and also entire comments... Leaving the commenter thinking that their comment is being seen by the world, when it isn't. No notification is provided by Ebay or Youtube that this has happened, so no corrective action can be taken!
I spoke to Ebay's support team and the agent I spoke to contradicted herself several times - saying that no such links were allowed and hadn't been since 2017.. When I said I know that these links had worked in 2017-2019, she looked at the links policy and found it doesn't say what she thought it said. To cut a long story short, she didn't have a clue what the details of the issue were, but Ebay's policy says it's ok to post Youtube videos that contain reviews or product samples, so I did that..
I uploaded some audio as video to youtube and tried to embed it into Ebay. It all appeared to work, until I tried to view the advert from a remote location again - and the youtube video was no longer visible. Once again, they had removed the audio from the advert without telling me. Next up, I tried just posting a simple hyperlink to the youtube video, instead of embedding the video player and that actually worked. I thought I had found a solution.. But no...
The next day, Youtube informed me/him that his account was suspended for copyright and spam issues! I wrote to them stating that I believe that use of the audio material (no longer than 30 seconds per file) was fair use from a copyright perspective. They replied saying they were keeping the account suspended and made no more comment.
The ebay agent wasn't able to provide ANY video hosting sites that ebay whitelists, so I have no clue what other options I have! I tried to embed an audio HTML object into the page and it doesn't play in the final advert. At the moment, the only option I can use is to paste the URL to the audio file in Dropbox directly into the advert and have the user copy and paste the URL into a new tab to access the preview!
This is so dumb, I am constantly amazed at how poorly designed Ebay is from a technical perspective - honestly, they must make billions and their technology often seems like it was made by a teenager who's just starting out!
Anyway, I just thought to share this as I like to cover censorship and corporate stupidity - maybe it will inspire some solutions here!
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
Vote @ura-soul for Steem Witness!
(Witnesses are the computer servers that run the Steem Blockchain.
Without witnesses there is no Steem, Steemit, DTube, Utopian or
Busy... You can really help Steem by making your 30 witness votes count!)
These big tech companies just get worse and worse by the day!
Every day a new example of outrageous behaviour is revealed.
Pretty much, yes. It is motivation to replace them! Did you see the stories about Facebook's payment platform and possibly crypto currency? I imagine that will strengthen your case :)
Yes, and yes it does. It also shows their bad faith and blatant anti-competitive behavior more clearly.
Posted using Partiko iOS
Large tech companies and oligarchs have gotten far too powerful and need to be reigned in. This is disgusting.
I don't agree with the common belief that 'power corrupts', because I understand that we need power to do anything at all.. What corrupts is heartlessness and there is definitely an abundance of that in the tech world unfortunately.. It's part of why I created the Earth Heart community social network at Ureka.org.
The exact quote is “power tends to corrupt but absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Facebook & Google are in later category, as you are quite right that you need some power to do anything.
Posted using Partiko iOS
It's the unaccountability that extreme amounts of power tends to grant within present society. The lack of accountability is where most of the problem stems from, IMO.
With Ebay it is interesting that I have no idea if anyone actually checks to make sure that they aren't rigging all or most of the auctions for their own gain - which they could do quite simply!
FleaBay is not behind the other big-tech firms... they have just been more subtle. (and have a larger selection to hide things under)
I am often very shocked when i can no longer find things that used to be there. Finding the thing via search never shows the item, but pasting the old url does. And it is always in such a way as to make me think it is just poor programming.
However, what i think now is that their site isn't broken accidentally, it is broken deliberately.
T.H.E.I.R. plan seems to be, to be the controlling force on the internet.
Why be a monopoly when you can be the gate keeper? Deciding who can and can't sell on the interwebs.
Yes, they do the same as Youtube - removing things from the search that don't fit the narrative they want to push. I only use them because, like Youtube, they are the largest in their field and their competitors are not competitive enough yet.
It's tough to know exactly what's going on from the outside, but poor programming would certainly fit the requirements for plausible deniability.
i am pretty sure they are screwing with people / the world.
Have you ever seen a crayon drawing... done to look like it was done by a kid, but really it was done by some super artist?
When you get to a certain "goodness" as an artist you are able to see the care and respect to details. You notice that those certain details of the supposed crayon drawing are way to complex for a child to every do.
And it takes an even more refined skill to make the drawing still look like a child did it.
So, when i look at how amazonium works, i notice the programming behind it. And i can say, it wasn't a child that did that.
I'm sure that's true in some cases, yes. There's also the issue that they are just to wealthy that they don't have time to make actual improvements due to.. golf.
oh that's not good...
They have done the same to me, on the same site, though for them to survive, they require us, so they need to wake the fuck up. excuse my language. :-)
Centralized platform like Ebay have this problem, which is why having platforms like Steem is important to show how decentralized networks can work. Snax wants Steem to grow, and to become larger than ever before. We want to help Steem by letting people earn more money on their posts, with Snax and without leaving Steem or other socials:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@snaxteam/decentralizing-social-media-rewards-steem-and-snax-comparison
Congratulations @ura-soul! You received a personal award!
Thank you for taking part in the early access of Drugwars.
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:
Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!
Hi @ura-soul!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 6.958 which ranks you at #93 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has not changed in the last three days.
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 354 contributions, your post is ranked at #72.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server