I think it's largely a disagreement on definitions - tweet 7 in the thread even hints at this: >>>7. What many people call “shadow banning,” Twitter executives

I think it's largely a disagreement on definitions - tweet 7 in the thread even hints at this: >>>7. What many people call “shadow banning,” Twitter executives and employees call “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.” Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning. My definition of "shadow banning" (or hellbanning) is that the user's tweets/posts are not visible to anyone except them; Twitter was not doing that. Twitter was clear in saying "oh, we limit visibility, don't allow certain things in trending topics, etc." and apparently some people think of that as shadow banning.