they have been culling via shadowbanning for a month now
Way more than months. This goes at least as far back as the 2016 kerfuffle over The_Donald, ChapoTrapHouse, and other increasingly popular outside-the-mainstream communities.
Honestly easier to trace it back to 2012, when Reddit was gaining popular steam and doing lots of high profile AMAs. Shadowbanning was a great way to quash the mix of spam accounts and hecklers without letting the people running the accounts know they needed to roll up new ones.
Way more than months. This goes at least as far back as the 2016 kerfuffle over The_Donald, ChapoTrapHouse, and other increasingly popular outside-the-mainstream communities.
Honestly easier to trace it back to 2012, when Reddit was gaining popular steam and doing lots of high profile AMAs. Shadowbanning was a great way to quash the mix of spam accounts and hecklers without letting the people running the accounts know they needed to roll up new ones.