Probably he is serious, you can get shadow-banned on TikTok/Instagram/Facebook by posting swear/obscene words on images. Obviously that thing doesn't happen here, this is not China.
It’s really bad because that sort of self censoring spills into other mediums like Teams chats at work. I had a coworker message me and say “I feel like an !di0t right now”
I can't blame people given how many parts of the Internet now engage in automated or semi-automated intransparent censorship. Can't have the general public communicating freely with each other, they might coordinate a revolution or something. So far I trust the fediverse to be relatively immune from that though.
I got auto-banned after commenting on a reddit post because the bot searched my entire post history and found I had commented on NSFW threads in the past! The extra fun part was that I really hadn’t. The NSFW threads were from subs that had turned that flag on for all posts out of protest for Reddit’s closed API debacle. In short, exactly as you describe. Intending to quash the revolution.
People have censorship ingrained in them so thoroughly that they carry it with them at all times, even when it is blatantly unnecessary. Buncha cunts if you ask me!