> she gives anecdotal accounts of popular creators being gradually shadowbanned

How "popular" are we talking, though? Taking a big picture view, "official" narratives are pretty popular whilst "alternative" points of view are niche. And modern AI-powered algorithms don't do a great job of promoting niche, long-tail content in general. For all we know, this might be the outcome of a random AI tweak that results in burying some content because it gets predicted as "unpopular".