It isn't. When you're banned, you know you're banned. Thus, you know you can't expect to use your account for communication anymore. When you're shadow-banned, you don't know you are shadow-banned, and will continue to attempt using your account for communication, and believe it's the other people who are just ignoring you.

What type of shadow ban are you talking about? Are you talking about being unable to post (e.g. The Frustration Loop) or about other people being unable to see your posts? Then yes, I agree that's worse than being banned. But if we're talking about a 10-60s lag (as I mentioned in my comment and the previous posters were talking about), I say that's better than being banned, because communication can still take place.

Right, my mistake. I was talking about both shadow-bans and error-bans/The Frustration Loop. The common thing here is that you're being gaslighted by the service.