I'm not aware of this and any argument for censorship is usually quite a long stretch of hypertheticals.
For violating TOS people should know what rule they have violated. For example doxing, spamming or just being insufferably rude. Punishment without explanation or reason is obviously unethical.
I think shadow banning people and then actively keeping them in loop can hardly argued to be ethical. Shadow banning itself is barely ethical.
If AI could help people to bring their point or grievance across in a clear manner, this would be the opposite of a shadow ban. This can be done transparent, in Form of a suggestion.
E.g to write penis as p.e.n.i.s. to make clear that proton enhanced neutron induction spectroscopy is abbreviated here, might be helpful to some.
AI can create a feedback loop ethically, if it makes itself know as an AI or automated system or Eliza 2.0. The user can choose to just opt out or mash on his keyboard as he pleases, as we do since 1964.
That is all ethical, but deceiving users and trapping them definitely isn't.
But hey, maybe he's right. I don't know (or really care) what our next steps are as a society if it's true, but assuming he's telling the truth seems a bit like jumping-the-gun.
No misguided popular movement (or even factual information, lacking critical context of course) will be able to gain momentum, as its promoters will be unknowingly yelling into the void. On the other hand, movements and ideas that promote wellbeing and harmony will spread easily. It does not take advanced AI to categorize vocal people by politics, and quarantine those with hateful ideas.
This is our chance to safely defuse humanity's hateful instincts, and we should take it.
Best of all, it is completely ethical because, as a since-deleted post pointed out, it is vaguely hinted at in the Terms of Service. Voluntary agreements are the highest form of ethics. They are beyond moral question, and in fact the whole purpose of society is to enable and enforce them.
Those who don't like it are free to stop participating in online society. With such an easy and safe way out, there is absolutely nothing to worry about.
That's not how humans work.
This is a complete unhinged fantasy.
As described, it's not even about segregating different audiences, but about sequestering and silencing specific people, yet keeping them engaged at the same time, perhaps to be able to continue to show them ads and keep up the platform's KPIs.
In a way, that'd be quite similar to dating platforms creating fake profiles to keep their members engaged, which I doubt anyone would consider ethical behaviour.
If an online service doesn't want certain types of opinions, ideas, or people on their platform, that's absolutely fine. Just tell them, so they can take their business elsewhere.
This doesn't make sense to me, because it seems like a huge amount of investment to...what? Get them to see more ads instead of getting sick of people not reacting to their trolling and leaving entirely? If the return on investment is high enough for this to be practical, it suggests the community has a toxicity problem that itself needs to be addressed. What makes so many people so angry and toxic?
Pavlov has nothing on the business of training people through computing.
