New accounts are only default shadowbanned when created from a known VPN IP or a known "bad" IP for which user creation isn't yet banned. The shadowban expires

New accounts are only default shadowbanned when created from a known VPN IP or a known "bad" IP for which user creation isn't yet banned. The shadowban expires after a couple months (?) which is why sometimes you'll see accounts making their first visible comment even though they were created some time ago. Accounts with a high comment flag rate are timed out. New accounts with a sufficiently high comment flag rate are permanently timed out. Accounts likely operated by known trolls are manually shadowbanned.