In 2022 Reddit introduced an alternative to shadow banning; as in shadow banning, the troll would be cut off from other users on the website, their posts hidden, and the user not informed. However, through the magic of technology, an army of bots would reply to the post agreeing, praising, and generally supporting the banned user. All the users comments and posts were hidden, as were all the auto-generated replies; the user need never know, nor ever be unhappy.
But actually, no. This was a prank by Twitter user @nearcyan, who mocked up a screenshot of an article from The New York Times. It was a fairly open prank, unveiled as soon as you opened the Twitter thread, but quite well done, with an ersatz but well-drafted article started, and some sites on the internet taking it as truth.
As of the time of this posting, no sites are known to do this, but it is clearly technologically feasible, and approximating the price range where it Just Makes Good Business Sense. I suspect we'll be seeing it soon.
BQ24