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
: 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
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Merriam-Webster unabridged
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