Shadow-banning
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Shadow banning, also known as stealth banning, hell banning, ghost banning or comment ghosting, is a practice done in social media, with the objective to censor, block or hide information that might be considered sensitive for the company, a government or an entity, not showing evident signals to the publisher that their content has been banned.
How it works
Shadowbans usually use practices to think the publisher has still visible their post or content. Common practices usually involve into hiding posts from algorithm recommendations or search results, and making the posts visible for the publishers. More aggressive practices hide completely the posts and making them completely inaccesible from links, but the posts are still visible by the publishers.
Why it is a problem
Censorship
Shadow bans can be used as a form of arbitrary censorship, preventing users to share information that might even be legal or harmless.
False positives
Several social media use automated moderation to shadow ban content, usually resulting into algorithm mistakes that flag harmless content, damaging an user's visibility on social media.