Have you heard of the term shadow banning on Twitter? In short, it's when Twitter feels that you are violating some broadly interpreted term of service, so they limit the reach of your account... and they don't tell you about it! The funny thing about it though is that it seems to only happen to conservatives.
From The Independent:
The issue of online "shadow banning" has once again provoked a major debate about free speech and censorship, after US President Donald Trump accused Twitter of silencing Republicans.
Shadow banning essentially means that a user of Twitter or any other online forum is not actually banned outright. Instead, all of their posts are made only visible to themselves.
For example, if a Twitter user was shadow banned, they would still be able to see their tweets but no one else would. The idea is to limit the reach of a user without them being aware that they have been silenced – potentially preventing them from retaliating against the moderators responsible for the ban.Well, Shadow Banning is a very real thing. In fact, a recent hidden camera video from Project Veritas shows how Twitter engineers use Shadow Banning to silence conservatives:
So why am I bringing this all up? Well, our Mainwashed political Twitter account recently got shadow banned and we didn't even realize it! How did we figure it out? I'm glad you asked!
We found an online Shadow Ban check tool! All you have to do is enter your Twitter handle, and click check!
I'm not sure who exactly we pissed off, but we're taking it as a compliment that we did! It means our message is getting out there!
Anyway, if you are a conservative person on Twitter and your reach has been significantly stifled, try this tool out. You might just find that you've been Shadow Banned!