Shadow banning is Orwellian . something you might expect from the CCP instead of a supposedly progressive online forum. If you're going to ban someone at least have the decency to let them know they are banned.
It's certainly a harsher punishment than normal banning, but I don't see why it would be that different. Assuming you have a user posting something bannable and always sign it with their initials. But whenever they are banned they come back under a different name and continue to do bannable offenses. That is a good reason for shadowbanning imo.
Though any first offense should always be normal-banned imo.
You're right, it is, but there are some folks who want nothing more than to burn down what you built. In the real world those people get physically dealt with, but in the virtual world where there's no means of physically restraining someone, what's your alternative?