“”shadow-banned””
Another cutesy term - definition, please!
It is where the operator or moderators of a social media site don’t allow your posts to be seen by anyone, but you. You don’t get a notification so essentially you are in a double secret probationary read only status. Happens almost exclusively to conservatives. If one were to look at the President’s twitter feed, it appears there are many more people opposed than agreeing with what he says, through the effects of shadow banning.
You aren’t outright banned from the site, told we’ve banned you for X transgression.
We let you log in. We let you send Tweets. But half or none of your followers see it. So you don’t KNOW you’re banned unless someone else says “I can’t find your profile, I don’t see your Tweets, all your attachments are listed as unavailable”.
Twitter’s been doing that to a lot of conservatives and libertarians.
And they’ve been doing it by degrees. Like randomly dropping a fraction of your subscribers so they have to re-subscribe. Like hiding a fraction of your attachments but not to the same people every time. Like putting a “this attachment is unavailable” though clicking on that notice makes it available.
All of these passive-aggressive tactics are to limit the spread of conservative viewpoints without actually BANNING someone. And they’re done knowing that cutting the audience in half limits the reach of said viewpoints. That’s why they do it.