Okay, before I just had a sneaking suspicion, but now I feel like I'm noticing a distinct pattern on Twitter.
You know how those random Twitter pornbots with no followers who like people's posts all the time? Did it strike you that tafter hiding likes from public view, this is now the perfect way to covertly derank and therefore deboost people as being "low quality content?"
I just noticed today that it feels like the deeper I make posts into the same conversation thread, the more of them show up. It feels like a discount way to hide people's posts while also making them feel like they're getting engagement, which is normally supposed to boost them. "Hey, free like. Nice!"
The reason my mind is going directly to this theory is that the likes are almost always instantaneous. You post something and you get a pornbot like the instant it's published. But not on every post equally. I just got three instant pornbot likes on the same post when I started getting deep into a reply thread.
I'm talking about dry Bible subjects on Twitter currently; there's nothing that can be mistaken for sexual trigger words that might activate a botfarm; and yet the deeper I go into the same conversation thread the more low quality "likes" show up which almost certainly are deboosting and therefore shadowbanning my content.
Again, it's a theory. I don't have enough information to go on, but it's starting to feel like that's what's happening on Twitter.
How insanely fucking childish if this is the case.