EDIT: @mindbleach@sh.itjust.works shared something that might help to circumvent this shit:
Contained in these parentheses is a zero-width joiner: (โ)
Basically, add those to whatever you feel that might be filtered out, then remove the parentheses. The content inside the parentheses is invisible, but it screws with regex rules.
I'd imagine in that particular case it felt like spam. If someone came through here and was named Nick_From_Nike and only posted in threads related to Nike and only positively about Nike, I feel like many would quirk a brow.
Are we seeing shadowbans with established accounts that don't have lemmy in their username? Considering r/redditalternatives is still going strong, seems unlikely.