There is an persistent conspiracy theory in the world of internet celebrities that claims social media platforms like to slash viewing figures to punish creators. So-called shadowbans are thought to reduce popularity by stealth. No matter how many times tech companies say they are not real, the idea persists.
Fears of shadowbans play out across every platform. In 2020, YouTube was accused of shadowbanning PewDiePie, one of its most popular creators, after users complained that they could not see his channel in search results.
In 2018, Donald Trump claimed that Twitter was shadowbanning conservative voices. He later used these claims to drum up interest in his own Twitter-like social media company, Truth Social. On the new platform, he wrote, “there will be no shadow-banning, throttling, demonetising, or messing with algorithms for political manipulation.”