no obviously not. User was probably banned for another reason or in error.

I mean do people seriously believe Sheryl Sandberg is sitting somewhere banning Lincoln from Utah with a thousand followers so that he can't spread the gospel of Mastodon

If Sheryl Sandberg is the name of a program scanning messages for references to Mastodon (or decentralization, or whatever) and banning accounts promoting it, then yes apparently some people do believe that. It's not like some inconceivable idea. Or perhaps it just bans accounts "promoting" anything without paying for the privilege.

There are various groups, pages and posts related to Mastodon, Diaspora and the Fediverse. I don't think there is an algorithm proactively banning people for promoting it.

I don't think so either, although I wouldn't reject the possibility that those topics have some weight in the algorithm, whether intentionally or thanks to statistics. I do reject the absurd and dismissive "do people seriously believe Sheryl Sandberg is sitting somewhere banning..." mischaracterization of the argument.

If anything I wouldn't be surprised to hear Facebook funding them. Can't be a monopoly if you've got a "competitor"

Like how Google gave duck.com to DuckDuckGo and funds Mozilla

I do, and am working on it, not to profit... just to route around the damage to the internet it causes.