shadow ban

verb

variants or shadowban or less commonly shadow-ban
shadow banned or shadowbanned also shadow-banned; shadow banning or shadowbanning also shadow-banning; shadow bans or shadowbans also shadow-bans

transitive verb

: to cause (a user or their content) to be hidden from some or all other users usually without the user's knowledge
Users, the plea explains, will not have any way to know whether or not they have been shadow banned unless they experience a decrease in the audience reach of their posts/tweets.Debayan Roy
Black creators on TikTok claim the popular social media app is still "shadow banning" their content—despite the company's pledge to better support creators of color …Meira Gebel
How can you know if a post isn't getting shared because it's been shadowbanned or because it isn't very good?Geoffrey A. Fowler
We do not shadowban anyone based on political ideology.Jack Dorsey, quoted in Wired
This includes shadow-banning accounts to reduce their visibility …Rounak Jain
shadowban noun
or shadow ban or less commonly shadow-ban
plural shadowbans or shadow bans also shadow-bans
The shadowban is useful in that rather than someone immediately being locked out and possibly retaliating by, for example, making a new account, the user fades away gradually due to the lack of interaction from other users. Adi Robertson
Instead of banning a user outright and informing them of such punishment, a shadowban makes a user's post visible only to themselves. Brian Feldman
Allowing a user to continue to post to a forum but limiting who can actually see those posts is commonly known as a shadow ban Dieter Bohn

Examples of shadow ban in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
These examples are automatically compiled from online sources to illustrate current usage. Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Possibly done as an attempt to skirt shadow bans, these users (and presumably some bots) began to employ the word as captions to promote their own clips. Mikelle Street, Them, 4 Oct. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

2007, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of shadow ban was in 2007

Dictionary Entries Near shadow ban

Cite this Entry

“Shadow ban.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shadow%20ban. Accessed 12 Nov. 2024.

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
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