> I’m not sure how you can think people approve of something they aren’t even aware is happening.
Because people often trust people based on reputation, results, or other proxy measures rather than reviewing every action they take.
> It’s not just deceptive to the shadowbanned user, it’s deceptive to the whole community, too.
It is. At the same time I think most people don't care, and are fine not having every moderation action announced to them.
Additionally, as I've stated multiple times here, and so have others, HN allows anyone to opt into seeing these comments from shadowbanned users, so HN doesn't even follow the same ideal of the problem case you and others are putting forth. You'll get a lot farther pushing this idea of shadowbanning being bad and a problem if you actually respond to the reality of the situation you're arguing about here, and the counter-arguments being put forth, rather than just blindly repeating the same thing.
> How can an average user trust that the content they’re viewing isn’t entirely astroturfed? Or alternatively, 100% organic?
How is that anything to do with shadowbanning or moderation? That's a problem entirely separate and that shadowbanning and moderation of the type we're discussing has nothing to do with.
But, if you really want an asnwer to this ridiculous question, it's that you can go into your profile here, find the "showdead" option, turn it on, and then you'll see all the comments you're complaining are hidden and deceptive and hidden from all the users. And if you don't trust this is all the dead comments, you can't really trust the moderators at all (and there's no more or less trust than any other site which says they do or don't do something).